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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2010 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/historyofkingscoOOeato 



Otber Booft6 

By Dr. Eaton 

The Church of England in Nova 
Scotia and the Tory Clergy of 
THE Revolution 

The Heart of the Creeds, Histor- 
ical Religion in the Light of 
Modern Thought 

Acadian Legends and Lyrics 

Acadian Ballads 

The Lotus of the Nile and Other 
Poems 

Poems of the Christian Year 

Poems in Notable Anthologies 

Magazine and Encyclopedia Ar- 
ticles 

Family Historical Monographs 

Educational Works Compiled 



The History 

OF 

KIJVGS OOUIS^TY 

NOVA SCOTIA 

HEART OF THE 
ACADIAN LAND 

GIVING A SKETCH OF THE FRENCH AND 

THEIR EXPULSION; AND A HISTORY 

OF THE NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 

WHO CAME IN THEIR STEAD 

WITH MANY GENEALOGIES 
1604 - 1910 

BY 

ARTHUR WENTWORTH HAMILTON EATON, M. A., D. C. L 

Priest of the Diocese of New York; Corresponding Member of the Nova Scotia Historical 
Society; Honorary Member of the New Brunswick Historical Society; Life 
Member of the New England Historic Genealogical 
Society; Member of the Boston Authors Club, 




SALEM. MASS. 

THE SALEM PRESS COMPANY 

1910 






^ 



'¥Mfi 



^ 



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\ 



TO 

Of My Brother 
FRANK HERBERT EATON, M. A., D. C. L. 

This Book is Affectionatei,y 
Inscribed 



CONTENTS 

Faoi 

Preface ix 

I. King's County 1 

11. The Micmac Indians 16 

III. The Acadian French 23 

IV. The Acadians to the Expulsion 39 

V. The Coming of New England Planters to Corn- 

WALLIS AND HORTON » . 58 

VI. The Township of Aylesford 90 

VII. The Township of Parrsborough 115 

VIII. Kentville, the Shire Town 123 

IX. Wolfville, Canning, Berwick, and other places 147 

X. County Government, Public Officials .... 159 

XI. Roads and Travelling, Dyke Building .... 176 

XII. Chief Industries of the County 190 

XIII. Houses, Furniture, Dress 207 

XIV. Marriages, Domestic Life, Slaves, Etc 224 

XV. The Anglican Church 240 

XVI. The Congregationalist Church, and the Alline 

Revival 271 

XVII. Early Presbyterianism 294 



Vlll CONTENTS 

Faos 

XVIII. The Rise of the Baptists 303 

XIX. Early Methodism . 322 

XX. The Roman Catholic Church 329 

XXI. The Progress of Education 334 

XXII. Acadia University 348 

XXIII. Literature, Authors, Newspapers 360 

XXIV. Politics, Representatives to the Legislature . 410 
XXV. The County's Militia 426 

XXVI. Current Events 441 

Population at Different Periods 458 

Biographies 461 

Family Sketches 542 

Index 885 



PREFACE 

As the most prosperous part of the whole Acadian country in 
French times, and as the scene of conspicuous events at the tragical 
period of the Acadian expulsion, King's County, Nova Scotia, will 
always have a wider interest for the world than is possible with 
most rural localities. That part of the county which borders the 
Basin of Minas is the scene of the early part of Longfellow's 
Evangeline, and all through the two original townships of Horton 
and Cornwallis, which compose the eastern part of the county, were 
scattered the clustered hamlets and individual homes of those 
thrifty French people who in 1755 were forcibly taken from their 
fertile farms and rich dyke-lands into suffering exile in unfriendly 
colonies, and placed as wretched paupers among people who had 
no sympathy with their traditions or habits of mind, who were 
unfamiliar with their faces, and who profoundly hated their speech. 
"When the Aeadians had been deported the red tide-floods of the 
Bay of Fundy bore to Minas Basin 's shores a new population, repre- 
senting families that had long been conspicuous for energy and 
worth in various parts of New England, and with these began a 
fresh civilization in King's County, that continued and conserved 
much that had been best from the beginning in New England's own 
life. From such favoured towns as New London, Norwich, Say- 
brook, Colchester, Lebanon, and Lyme, and from similarly inter- 
esting places in Rhode Island, these King's County successors of the 
Aeadians were largely drawn, and it is with them and their institu- 
tions and their deeds that the volume here introduced will be found 
chiefly to deal. 

That the descendants of these New England planters in the 
favourable conditions in which they found themselves in the fruitful 
Acadian country in not a few cases have carved out for themselves 
brilliant careers will not seem strange when one remembers the fine 
qualities of the stock from which most of them sprang. In King's 



X KING'S COUNTY 

Oounty the first New England owners of the land with untiring 
industry replanted the long tilled but now vacant upland soil, 
rebuilt and enlarged the great marsh spaces reclaimed from the 
sea by their predecessors, set out new orchards, sowed flourishing 
fields of flax and com, built churches, established schools, and by 
their intelligence and piety laid the foundations for a college, 
where, in one of the loveliest regions in eastern America, for seventy 
years now, -sound learning has been constantly fostered and solid 
principles have been taught. At the close of the Revolutionary War 
between thirty and thirty-five thousand Loyalists, from New Eng- 
land, New York, New Jersey, and colonies farther south, poured 
into Nova Scotia, and in King's County a certain number of these 
refugees also established their homes. To these later important 
settlers a certain amount of attention has naturally been given in 
this book. 

In the history of any colony the origins and interrelations of 
families have an important place, but in a general History complete 
Genealogies are, of course, impossible. In the laborious task of 
writing this History the last three years have almost entirely been 
spent, and not by any means the least difficult part of the task has 
been the compilation of the many family sketches the book contains. 
To make these sketches complete family histories, several lifetimes 
would have been demanded and many volumes required to be filled, 
but if the sketches here given, brief as some of them necessarily 
are, shall give the families themselves chiefly concerned an impulse 
for more thorough genealogical research on their own part, the 
author's purpose in making them shall have been fully served. 
That some families are not represented in the book at all is due to 
the fact that the author's request in the newspapers for further 
genealogical information, except in two or three cases has received 
no response. On such omitted families, and on any families whose 
Genealogies are nowhere yet fully in print, the author urges the 
necessity for the careful preservation and collation of records. For 
many decades until recently Nova Scotia has had no public registra- 
tion of vital statistics and this fact makes more imperative the 



PREFACE xi 

careful preservation of private records of births, marriages, and 
deaths. 

To several persons, in and out of the county, for material aid 
in the writing of this book, the author desires here strongly to 
express his thanks. Major Robert William Starr, of Wolfville, has 
the widest knowledge of any person living in the county of the 
general details of the county's history, and from first to last the 
author has had Major Starr's cordial and most important help. To 
Mr. John Burgess Calkin, LL.D., of Truro, Mr. John Elihu Wood- 
worth of Berwick, Hon. Judge Savary, the accomplished editor and 
part author of the valuable Calnek-Savary History of Annapolis ; to 
Harry Piers, Esq., of Halifax, Miss Donohue, Acting Librarian of 
the Nova Scotia Historical Society, the Rev. Edward Manning 
Saunders, D.D., of Halifax, Mr. Gustavus E. Bishop, of Greenwich, 
Mr. John E. Chapman, of Boston, and in connection with the chapter 
on authors and literature the Rev. Arthur John Lockhart, of Winter- 
port, Maine, the author owes deep debts of gratitude. For con- 
tinual inspiration and suggestion he owes much also to his cousin, 
Dr. Benjamin Rand, of Harvard University, one of the best friends 
Nova Scotia, and indeed Canada at large, has in the United States. 
By his cousins, Ralph Samuel Eaton and Mrs. Wilford Henry Chip- 
man, of Kentville, the author has also been helped in important ways. 

In the preparation of family sketches the well known news- 
paper articles, now in scrap books, of the late William Pitt Brechin, 
M.D., of Boston, have been of great assistance. Dr. Brechin was an 
indefatigable genealogist of Cornwallis families, and although his 
work has been available for this History only as furnishing a basis 
for sketches, in the cases of several families such basis it has formed. 
Owing, however, to the loyal labour in summer vacations of Dr. 
Benjamin Rand in copying completely the vital records in the 
Cornwallis Town Book the author has been able to make direct 
appeal to the original source from which a very considerable part 
of Dr. Brechin's material was drawn. In the fifty-fourth volume 
of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register a slight 
sketch of Dr. Brechin and his work by the author of this book will 



xii KING'S COUNTY 

be found. Among the many sons of King's County who in other parts 
of the continent have kept loyal to their native traditions and have 
reflected honour on the country of their birth, Dr. Brechin's name 
deserves an important place. 

Another debt of gratitude owed by the author, which he can 
never adequately repay, is here gladly acknowledged. The History 
of King's County has been written entirely in the Library of the 
New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston, and to the 
kindly encouragement and unvarying courtesy of the able Libra- 
rian of the Society, Mr. William Prescott Greenlaw, as also to the 
friendly interest of the accomplished Assistant Librarian, Miss 
Mary Ella Stickney, is due the fact that the book has come into 
being at all. Much of the material for the History has been gradu- 
ally collected during the author's twenty years residence in New 
York City, but the writing of the book could hardly have been done 
elsewhere than in Boston, and in Boston it could have been done 
nowhere so pleasantly or so thoroughly as under the genial auspices 
mentioned above. The most liberal subscriber to the book before 
publication has been Mr. Arthur "Watson Eaton, of Pittsfield, Mass., 
whose intelligent appreciation of the necessity for such a work as 
the present has greatly strengthened the author's courage in carry- 
ing to completion his laborious and difficult task. 



Boston, 

July, 1910. 



IMPORTANT EVENTS 

De Monts, Champlain, and Poutrincourt visit Minas . . . 1604 

Champlain again visits Minas 1606 

Poutrincourt and Bieneourt visit Minas 1607 

First Settlement at Minas shortly before 1680 

Col. Benjamin Church visits Minas and cuts the dykes . . . 1704 

Acadia finally conquered by England 1710 

Unconditional Oath of Allegiance refused 1755 

Expulsion of the French 1755 

Representative Assembly created in Nova Scotia 1757 

Proclamation for Settling French Lands adopted .... 1758 

Townships of Horton, Comwallis, and Falmouth erected . 1759 

Coming of New England Planters 1760- 61 

Anglican Mission established 1762 

Congregationalist Church founded about 1765 

Rev. James Murdoch comes to Horton 1766 

Henry Alline begins to preach 1776 

New Light Congregationalist Church of Cornwallis founded 1778 

Hants County formed 1781 

Migration to New Brunswick about 1783 

Loyalists settle at Aylesford and Parrsborough 1783 

The Congregationalist Church of Cornwallis becomes Presby- 
terian 1785 

Aylesford Township erected about 1786 

The Baptist Church of Cornwallis founded 1807 

The Shire Town named 1826 

Horton Academy founded 1829 

Parrsborough separated from King's 1840 

Acadia College chartered 1840 

King's County changed to a municipality 1879 

Kentville incorporated 1886 

Wolfville incorporated . 1893 



CORRECTIONS 

In the printing of this volume certain slight errors have crept into the 
text, these the author urges the owner of the book kindly to correct with his pen. 

Page 45, line 6, omit in his place. 

" 59, line 10, for affected read effected. 

" 158, line 32, for spent read spend. 

" 163, line 31, for Coitman read Cottnam. 

" 173, line 11, for Coronors read Coroners. 

" 240, line 25, for Lunenberg, read Lunenburg. 

" 240, line 27, for Louisberg read Louisburg. 

" 256, line 13, for have mmistered read may have ministered. 

" 268, line 20, for have lost read have been lost. 

" 269, line 32, for Earl Gray read Earl Grey. 

" 273, line 10, for was he had sold read was that he had sold. 
I " 288, line 20, for shut not read shut out. 

" 303, line 11, omit other. 

" 304, line 32, for a chaplain read as chaplain. 

" 352, line 22, for Hon. S. P. Robie read Hon. S. B. Robie. 

" 603, line 17, for Tarnar {Troop) Starr read Tamar (Troop) Starr. 

" 603, line 30, for as physician read as a physician. 

" 611, line 28. The proper date of John Cogswell's birth is Sept. 26, 1781. 

" 624, De Blois family sketch, line 11, omit George. 

" 643, 8th line from the bottom, for Volumtown read Voluntown. 

" 651, line 5, for George, born April, lygo, read April 6, 1790. 

" 716, at the end of line 19 insert his. 

" 731, lines 1, 2, 3, should read: You are on a summit of a hill over- 
looking the valley. Before you lies its whole length of about 10 miles ( ?) 
and a mile of breadth. Through its centre flows the narrow Gaspereau 
stream, etc. 

" 747, line 8, omit influence. 

" 843, Thorpe family sketch, line 4, for gives as much light read gives us 
much light. 

" 859, line 7, after b. Dec. ij, 1S3J, insert m. (married). 



NOTE 
It was originally intended to add to this History a list of the chief sources 
from which the materials for it have been drawn. Among these would have 
been mentioned two manuscript historical sketches of King's Cotmty, written 
many years ago for the Aikin Prize, and since then preserved in the library of 
King's College, Windsor. The writers of these interesting manuscripts were 
Charles S. Hamilton, Esq., Counsellor at Law, of New Haven, Conn., a native 
of Horton, winner of the Aikin Prize, and Lieut.-Col. Wentworth Eaton Ros- 
coe, K.C., Barrister, of Kentville, a native of Comwallis. To both these man- 
uscripts the author is indebted for valuable suggestions. 



CHAPTEK I 
KING'S COUNTY 

In the history of Nova Scotia at large there is a certain dram- 
atic interest that belongs to few portions of the American continent. 
The little peninsula which with the island of Cape Breton now 
forms this maritime province, for more than a century served as 
the chief contending ground for empire in America of two great 
European nations, whose strifes ceased only when the noted French 
strongholds, Louisburg and Quebec, at last fell decisively into 
English hands. To Port Royal, now Annapolis Royal, in the county 
of Annapolis, and to Fort Beausejour, now in Cumberland county, 
attaches a stronger military interest than to any point in King's 
County, but in the whole Acadian province there was not so pros- 
perous a district as Minas, and though Beaubassin, Cobequid, 
Piziquid, and Port Royal share deeply in the tragic interest of the 
expulsion, in the village of Grand Pre, and the country near it that 
borders on the Gaspereau, the saddest romance of the expulsion 
seems always to lie. In King's County was the district of Minas, 
and the populous adjoining district at first included in Minas, 
known in French annals as Riviere aux Canards. 

Through the county, into Minas Basin, flow the five rivers, with 
names now only slightly anglicized, the Gaspereau, the Grand Habi- 
tant, the Riviere aux Canards, the Petit Habitant, and the 
Pereau. From north-east to south-west run the two ranges of hills 
known as the North and South mountains, the North Mountain 
terminating at Minas Channel in rugged Cape Split and the bold 
bluff, Blomidon. The county's northern and eastern boundaries, 
respectively, are determined by the Bay of Fundy and Minas Basin, 
and the bordering counties, that make its western and southern 
boundaries, are the counties of Annapolis, Lunenburg, and Hants. 



2 KING'S COUNTY 

Within its ancient limits as a county, King's was one of the largest 
comities in the province, with its present limits it is one of the 
counties of second size. It now contains in all but eight hundred 
and eleven square miles, but its importance is not measured by its 
acreage, for its landscape is so beautiful and the fertility of its soil 
so great that it long ago came to be called appropriately, "the 
Garden of Nova Scotia." In shape the county is very like the 
letter V, the vertical point resting on the county of Lunenburg. 
Nova Scotia's civil government began with the founding of 
Halifax in 1749 ; and August 17th, 1759, at a meeting of the Council, 
Messrs, Jonathan Belcher, Benjamin Green, John Collier, Charles 
Morris, Richard Bulkeley, Thomas Saul, and Benjamin Gerrish 
being present, the first division of the province into counties was 
made. The names given the five counties then created, were Halifax, 
Cumberland, Lunenburg, Annapolis, and King's. The boundaries 
of King's were described in the following way: ''King's to be 
bounded westerly by the county of Annapolis, and of the same 
width, and from the southeasterly corner of said county to run east 
24 degrees north to the lake emptying into Pisiquid (the Avon) 
River, and thence continuing near the same course to the river 
Chibenaccadie, opposite to the mouth of the river Stewiack ; thence 
up said river ten miles, and thence northerly to Tatmaguash, and 
from Tatmaguash, westerly, to the river Solier, where it discharges 
into the channel of Chignecto." From this description we see that 
King's County first comprised, besides the present county, a corner 
of Lunenburg, almost the whole of Hants, more than a third of 
Colchester, and about half of Cumberland. Between 1759 and 1785 
four other counties, Hants, Sydney, Shelburne, and Queens, were 
formed, and in the latter year the Council had the limits of all the 
counties in the province described. The most important change 
which had been made in the territory of King's since the beginning, 
was the creation from it of Hants, and the boundaries of the reduced 
King's were described as, "beginning at the bridge on Seven Mile 
Brook in Wilmot, being the beginning bound of the county of 
Annapolis, thence to run north ten degrees west to the Bay of 
Fundy, and from the said bridge south, ten degrees east to the 



KING'S COUNTY 3 

north line of Lunenburg County, thence to run north seventy-five 
degrees east until it conies to the south-west limit of Hants County, 
thence north thirty degrees west until it comes to the south-east 
angle of Horton township and by the dividing line of Horton and 
Falmouth to the River Pizzaquid now called Avon, and bounded on 
the north and north-east by the waters of the Bay of Fundy, Minas 
Gut, and Basin, and River Avon aforesaid, and also including the 
Tewnship of Parrsborough and other granted and ungranted land on 
the northern side of the Gut and Basin of Minas, which are ascer- 
tained by a line drawn from Cape Chignecto to the northern bound- 
ary line of Parrsborough, and thence to the south boundary of 
Francklin's Manor, and thence to begin at the east boundary of land 
granted Benjamin De Wolf and John Clark on the north side of the 
Basin of Minas aforesaid, thence to run north nine miles, and thence 
to the south boundary of Francklin 's Manor aforesaid ' '. 

At the meeting of the Council, December 16, 1785, when 
this description was submitted, there were present, the Honourables 
Richard Bulkeley, Henry Newton, Jonathan Binney, Alexander 
Brymer, Isaac Deschamps, Thomas Cochran, and Charles Morris, 

In 1821, '22, and '24, acts were passed calling for a new defini- 
tion of county limits. Pursuant to these acts, such definitions 
were prepared, and by another act, passed in 1826, were by the 
Council affirmed. The boundaries then settled, as regards King's at 
least, were, however, precisely those that had been fixed by the 
Council in 1785. Since 1826 no re-definition of the boundaries of 
King's has been necessary, or has been made. 

May 21, 1759, the two townships of Horton and Cornwallis had 
been created, and July 21st of that year the township of Falmouth 
was made. In 1761, from the part of Falmouth east of the Piziquid, 
which was known as East Falmouth, the township of Newport was 
set off, and in 1764 the township of Windsor was formed. In 
1781 these last three King's County townships petitioned to be 
erected into an independent county, and July 2d of that year Fal- 
mouth, Newport, and Windsor, "with the lands contiguous to them", 
became the county of Hants. As early as July 1, 1761, the settle- 



4 KING'S COUNTY 

ment of Cobequid, now Masstown, in Colchester County, was thrown 
into the comity of Halifax, and finally new limits for the early 
formed county of Cumberland were drawn. In Cumberland today, 
most of the old township of Parrsborough, on the north side of 
Minas Channel, is to be found, but until 1840 the district of Parrs- 
borough remained a township of King's. 

The third of the three present townships of King 's is Aylesf ord, 
but the exact time or manner of the recognition of it as a separate 
township we have never ascertained. "A part of Wilmot was now 
set off as a separate township and named Aylesf ord", says Murdoch, 
writing of the year 1786, but diligent inquiry has failed to give us 
any more light on the matter. 

May 13, 1784, it was resolved in Council that a large district 
now in Cumberland county should be included in King's. This tract 
is described as comprising "all that tract of land situate on the 
north side of the Basin of Minas and Gut, and bounded on the south 
by the shores thereof, on the western part by Cape Dore and along 
the coast of Cape Chignecto, on the north by a line drawn from the 
point of said cape to the north-western angle of a tract of land 
called Francklin Manor and by a line from thence seventy degrees 
east, twenty miles, and thence by a line to the north-east corner of 
land granted to Benjamin Gerrish, Esq., by the said land to the 
Basin aforesaid". It would seem from this action of the Council 
that the tract here referred to, which covers the south-western part 
of Cumberland, had up to this time lain outside of any county limits, 
but possibly before this it may have been roughly included in the 
county to which it now belongs. The history of the gradual forma- 
tion of the present county of Cumberland bears a close relation to 
the history of the formation of King's, but the details of the fixing 
of Cumberland's boundaries must be left to the future historian 
of that most northerly section of the Nova Scotian peninsula. 

The County of King's is thus now limited to what, until the 
erection of the county into a Municipality, in 1879, were the three 
townships of Horton, Cornwallis, and Aylesford, Horton being much 
the largest township of the three. 



KING'S COUNTY 5 

Of the general appearance of the townships of Horton and 
Cornwallis as one comes to them from the east, Judge Ilaliburton 
in his History of Nova Scotia eloquently says: ''After leaving Fal- 
mouth and proceeding on the great western road, the attention of 
the traveller is arrested by the extent and beauty of a view which 
bursts upon him very unexpectedly as he descends the Horton 
mountains. A sudden turn of the road displays at once the town- 
ships of Horton and Cornwallis, and the rivers that meander 
through them. Beyond is a lofty and extended chain of hills, pre- 
senting a vast chasm, apparently burst out by the waters of nine- 
teen rivers that empty into the Basin of Minas, and here escape 
into the Bay of Fundy. The variety and extent of this prospect, 
the beautiful verdant vale of the Gaspereaux; the extended town- 
ship of Horton, interspersed with groves of wood and cultivated 
fields, and the cloud-capt summit of the lofty cape that terminates 
the chain of the North Mountain, form an assemblage of objects 
rarely united with so striking an effect. * * * Nq part of the 
Province can boast more beautiful and diversified scenery than the 
township of Horton. Beside the splendid prospect from the moun- 
tain just mentioned, and those in the vicinity of Kentville, there 
are others still more interesting at a distance from the post road. 
It would be difficult to point out another landscape at all equal 
to that which is beheld from the hill that overlooks the site of the 
aUcient village of Minas. On either hand extend undulating hills 
richly cultivated, and intermingled with farm houses and orchards. 
From the base of these high lands extend the alluvial meadows, 
which add so much to the appearance and wealth of Horton. The 
Grand Prarie is skirted by Boot and Long Islands, whose fertile 
and well tilled fields are sheltered from the north by evergreen 
forests of dark foliage. Beyond are the wide expanse of waters 
of the Basin of Minas, the lower part of Cornwallis, and the isles 
and blue highlands of the opposite shores. The charm of this 
prospect consists in the unusual combination of hill, dale, woods, 
and cultivated fields; in the calm beauty of agricultural scenery, 
and in the romantic wildness of distant forests. During the sum- 



6 KING'S COUNTY 

mer and autumnal months, immense herds of cattle are seen quietly 
cropping the herbage of the Grand Prarie ; while numerous vessels 
plying on the Basin convey a pleasing evidence of the prosperity 
and resources of this fertile district." 

Of the fertility of the soil of Horton and Cornwallis too much 
cannot possibly be said. Besides the present fifty thousand acres 
of beautiful dyked land which these townships contain, a rich 
alluvial country in successive epochs reclaimed from the sea, there 
are perhaps seventy thousand acres of tilled upland, where grains 
and root crops grow luxuriantly, and where apple, pear, and plum 
orchards come to magnificent fruitage. Across the South Mountain 
lies a large area of forest land, and even here there is some good 
agricultural soil. It is in the so called "Annapolis Valley," how- 
ever, between the North and South mountains, that the rich farms 
and wonderful fruit orchards of this far famed region of the 
province of Nova Scotia are to be found. An almost magical charm, 
indeed, lies over this whole valley, its wide-spreading dyke-lands, 
pink-blossoming orchards, scarlet-maple clad hills, clumps of droop- 
ing willows, sturdy groves of oak, the graceful sweeping elms that 
throw soft shade over country and town — where else in northern 
America can such beauty be found! "The outlooks from many of 
the most elevated points," says a recent writer, "are admirable pic- 
tures of rural loveliness. Notable among them is the 'Lookoff', 
on the North Mountain, from which portions of five counties are 
visible, and where the eye ranges some ninety miles westward till 
it reaches the shores of Annapolis Basin. When seen in the early 
October haze it is a panorama of unforgettable charms. One has 
but to turn one's head from this view of the valley to see in its 
loveliness the historic Basin of Minas, framed in green and azure, 
fretting the wide curves of its shores with far-famed tides that race 
over the tawny flats, back and forth, from age to age. Another 
turn of the head, and we have in view Minas Channel, and on its 
farther shore the bold hills of Greville Bay and Spencer's Island, 
and the frowning cliffs of Cape D'Or." 

Of the beauties of the township of Aylesford, lying to the west 



KING'S COUNTY % 

and south-west of the other townships, somewhat less is to be sa,id in 
praise. The township covers a flat, sandy district between the 
North and South mountains, part of which is a bog about five miles, 
long, known as the Aylesford or Caribou Bog, where cranberries are 
largely cultivated, but it contains also much as good soil for agricul- 
ture as Cornwallis and Horton. Of the large region which includes 
Aylesford and Wilmot, the Rev. Dr. Saunders says: "Not many 
years have passed since it has been found that the swampy lands in 
the valley could be drained, and were of excellent quality. Now this 
section of the country is known as possessing all kinds of soil, from 
barren sand to thick red clay. Much of it is the very best soil 
for fruit raising, other parts are excellent for pasturage and hay 
lands. Hence the products of this part of the valley are very 
numerous." The distance from the eastern to the western boundary 
line of Aylesford township, by the old road, in the Almanacs of the 
18th century used always to be given as exactly ten miles. 

On the geological structure of King's County many longer or 
shorter treatises are to be found. Of these may be mentioned 
Jackson and Alger's discussion of the Mineralogy and Geology of 
Nova Scotia, 1832; Dr. Abram Gesner's "Remarks on the Geology 
and Mineralogy of Nova Scotia", 1836, and "Industrial Resources 
of Nova Scotia", 1849; Sir William Dawson's "Acadian Geology", 
1855 and 1878; Dr. Honeyman's paper on "Nova Seotian Geology", 
in the Nova Scotia Institute of Science, Vol. 5, Part 1; a paper by 
Professor Ernest Haycock, in the publications of the Nova Scotia 
Institute of Science, Vol. 10, Part 2; and a Summary Report of the 
Geological Survey Department, with a map, 1901. 

On the rich alluvial King's County marshes, and the remark- 
able Minas Basin tides, no one has written so well as King's Coun- 
ty's scholarly son, the late Frank Herbert Eaton, D. C. L., whose 
knowledge of the county's natural history and resources was ac- 
curate and wide. In an article in the Popular Science Monthly for 
June, 1893, Dr. Eaton described the marshes and tides, and his 
description is so graphic that with a few slight changes we repro- 
duce part of it here. 



8 KING'S COUNTY 

"Among the many littoral indentations of the western Atlan- 
tic", says Dr. Eaton, "no other possesses so many unique and in- 
teresting features as the Bay of Fundy. Of this truly extraordinary 
sheet of water the single fact is usually recorded in the school books 
that it is noted for its very high tides. But so meagre a reference 
to what is in itself an imposing exhibition of gravitational energy, 
helpful as it may be in a mnemonic way to the learner of geograph- 
ical catalogues, gives no hint either of the remarkable series of 
physiographical conditions which are the cause of this phenomenon, 
or of those which it creates. The Bay of Fundy is remarkable not 
simply for the grandeur of its tidal phenomena, but equally so for 
the exquisitely picturesque sculpturing of its coast line, and the 
diversity, range, and richness of the geological evidence thereby 
revealed; for the unique character of the extensive alluvial tracts 
that skirt its head- waters ; and for the wealth of legend, tradition, 
and romantic incident embodied in the early history of the people 
that dwell about it. 

"North of Cape Cod, the continental coast line recedes abruptly 
westward and then sweeps in a long curve north-eastwardly till 
the head-waters of the Bay of Fundy are reached. Turning again 
on itself, its course is westward to Cape Sable, from which it 
stretches away toward the east as the southern shore of Nova 
Scotia. Thus between capes Cod and Sable lies the long, narrow, 
open Bay of Maine which terminates toward the north and east in 
the land-locked Bay of Fundy. In the shallower waters of this open 
bay, the tidal impulse which over ocean depths moves only as a 
wave of vertical oscillation, is gradually changed into one of trans- 
lation. Under the influence of this transformation, the whole body 
of water moves slowly shoreward, and sweeping round with the curv- 
ing coast line, skirts the southern shores of Maine and New Bruns- 
wick till it reaches the narrow strait between Briar Island and 
Grand Manan. Compressed between these closer limits, the water 
is forced onward with increasing velocity into the Bay of Fundy, 
part finding its way into the Annapolis Basin and its tributary 
rivers, the main current, however, moving onward till it meets 



KING'S COUNTY 

the tongue of land which terminates in Cape D'Or. Here this cur- 
rent divides, the northern portion filling Shepody, and Chignecto 
basins; while the southern half rushes onward through the nar- 
row entrance to the Basin of Minas. As it passes capes Split and 
Blomidon, the swirling, eddying, foaming tide attains a velocity 
of ten miles or more an hour. Thus, twice a day the low and un- 
protected marsh-lands which former tides have made along the 
Minas, Shepody, Chignecto, and Annapolis shores are covered by 
the tidal flood, while in the tributary rivers the mingled salt and 
fresh water fills the channels for many miles into the interior to a 
height of ten, twenty, or thirty feet above the normal level of the 
stream. Thus it is that the long sickle-curved Maine coast grad- 
ually gathers up the water rolled upon it twice a day by the ocean 
tide-wave, and throwing it backward, presses it into the long fun- 
nel-shaped Bay of Fundy, within whose confines are exaggerated, 
far beyond their normal limits, all the spectacular and physiograph- 
ical effects of ordinary tidal phenomena. 

"Such is the general character of the Fundy tides, while local 
conditions determine great diversity in the height, velocity, and 
specific effects. In some places the extreme elevation of the flood- 
tide above low water mark is as great as sixty feet ; in some rivers 
the upward flow against the fresh-water current forms a rapidly 
moving wall or bore several feet in height, the rushing sound of 
which can be heard at considerable distance, while in others the 
two currents meet and mingle so quietly that an observer can hardly 
tell where the backward flow begins. 

** Lining the shores of the headwaters of the bay, and spread- 
ing far inland up the valleys of its river tributaries, are extensive 
tracts of alluvial marsh land of remarkable fertility. These great 
alluvial tracts are unlike any other so-called marshes known to exist. 
In general, alluvial deposits are formed as river basins by materials 
washed down from higher levels by fresh water floods; here the 
whole deposit is of tidal origin. Every incoming tide bears land- 
ward its burden of finely comminuted sediment, formed by the 
wearing action of the tidal currents upon the sides and bottom of 



10 KING'S COUNTY 

the bay. During the interval between the flood that covers the 
unprotected river and basin margins and the ebb that leaves them, 
bare again, the suspended sediment is precipitated as a film of soft 
and glistening mud, upon the partly dried and hardened deposi- 
tions of previous tides. Thus, layer after layer accumulates, until 
the flat becomes too high for any but extraordinary tides to cover. 

"Instructive illustrations these marsh flats often give of Na- 
ture's methods in the preservation of those records by which the 
geologist reads our earth's early history. So plastic and impres- 
sionable is the mud which the out-going tide has left, that it easily 
takes and holds the tracings of any disturbing contact. A wind- 
blown leaf, a resting insect, or a drop of rain, may make a tiny 
mould, which hardening somewhat before the next incoming flood, 
receives thereafter successive linings to which it gives its form. In 
this way the rain marks of a passing shower have been flxed, and 
then completely covered up ; and yet when subsequently exhumed, 
so perfectly were the spatter marks preserved that one could tell 
in which direction the wind was blowing when the shower fell. 

"It is obvious that the deposition of tidal sediment can in gen- 
eral be made only between the lower and higher limit-levels of the 
daily ebb and flow. The accumulation of mud to greater depths 
than these can only be accounted for on the supposition of a grad- 
ual subsidence of the littoral areas — a movement which would con- 
comitantly widen the area of tidal inundation. That such a steady 
and prolonged subsidence of the Fundy marsh-lined shores has 
been in progress since the marsh began to form, is attested not only 
by the surprising depths of mud accumulated, but also by the occur- 
rence in many places of deeply buried forests, which were clearly 
once above the coexistent tidal levels. 

"A general idea of the geological features of the depression 
in which the Bay of Fundy lies, is necessary to a fuller understand- 
ing of the nature of these marshes and especially of the sources of 
their wonderful fertility. In earlier geological times, but subse- 
quently to what is known as the Carboniferous Age, the bay was 
much wider and somewhat longer than it now is. The long ridge of 



KING'S COUNTY 11 

trap rock known as the North Mountain did not then exist, and the 
waters of the bay extended uninterruptedly over the whole of the 
Annapolis Valley to the base of the Silurian hills, which under the 
name of the South Mountain form the southern enclosure of the 
valley. Eastwardly the headwaters of the ancient bay washed the 
Devonian and Carboniferous rocks of the Cobequid Hills, while the 
northern shore line of the present bay, skirting the southern limit 
of the Paleozoic rocks of New Brunswick, is in the main identical 
with that of the original bay. In general character, the tidal move- 
ments of this larger Atlantic inlet were the same as in the modern 
smaller bay; and the semi-daily ebb and flow of the waters, by 
incessant and violent attrition with the Carboniferous limestones, 
shales, and sandstones, and the other ancient rocks that formed the 
bed and margins of the bay, produced immense quantities of sand 
and mud, sediment which was redistributed over the greater part 
of the Fundy valley. Subsequent changes of level caused a reces- 
sion of the waters to their present limits, and brought to view as 
the Triassic or New Red Sandstone, extensive areas of the sediment- 
ary deposits that had been accumulating beneath the surface. These 
red sandstone strata are still to be seen in shreds and patches, at 
various points in the Annapolis Valley and on the shores of the 
Minas, Cumberland, and Chigneeto basin. Their general dip 
towards the north indicates that the epoch-closing movement which 
narrowed the Bay of Fundy to its present limits was a subsiding 
of its bed along its northern, or New Brunswick border. Follow- 
ing this subsidence, as concluding events in the series of seismic 
convulsions — by which the region gained its present contour-fea- 
tures — occurred the volcanic eruptions in which the North Moun- 
tain had its origin. This long trappeau wall forms the southern 
boundary of the bay, from Cape Split to Digby Neck, a distance of 
a hundred and twenty-five miles; the only interruption to its 
continuity being the singular gap called Digby Gut, which gives 
an entrance into the beautiful Annapolis Basin. The effective shel- 
ter from northerly storms afforded by this wall of trap renders 
the climate of the apple growing region on its southerly incline, 
the mildest in Eastern Canada. 



U KING'S COUNTY 

"Though there were probably many volcanic vents along the 
line of fracture, yet the scene of greatest eruptive activity was 
no doubt near Cape Split, at the entrance to Minas Basin, scattered 
along the shores of which, on either side, are isolated patches of 
amygdaloidal trap. There are indications, too, that transverse 
ridges of trap run at intervals across the sandstone bottom of the 
bay. From these two Triassic rocks, the sandstone and the trap, 
that form the floor and margins of the bay, subjected to the erosive 
action of the ceaseless movements of the Fundy waters to and fro, 
mainly derives the material which constitutes the fertile alluvium 
at the head waters of the bay. The sandstone yields, of course, 
the greater part of the marsh-creating sediment. Its detritus con- 
sists of a large percentage of silica, a little clay, the iron which 
mainly determines its reddish colour, and the calcareous matter 
which served as a cement in the parent rock. This material, in 
the extremely comminuted form in which it occurs in marsh-land 
soil, would itself afford conditions highly favourable to the sup- 
port of vegetable life. But an additional cause of the wonderful 
fertility of these marshes is the richness of the trap-rock in various 
salts of potash, lime, and alumina, which the action of the water 
mingles freely with the sandstone mud. The plant supporting 
power of this complex soil is increased still further by contribu- 
tions from the upland soils through the medium of the streams and 
rivers flowing towards the bay. 

"The great fertility of this alluvium may be inferred from the 
fact that portions of the Annapolis, Cornwallis, Grand Pre and 
Cumberland marshes have been producing annually for almost two 
centuries from two to four tons per acre of the finest hay. Besides, 
it is a common practice, after the hay has been removed to con- 
vert the marshes into autumn pastures, on the luxuriant, tender 
after-growth of which cattle fatten more rapidly than on any other 
kind of food. Thus virtually two crops are annually taken from 
the land, to which no fertilizing return is ever made. The only 
portions of the Acadian marshes that have as yet shown signs of 
exhaustion are those about the Chignecto branch of the bay, on the 



KING'S COUNTY 13 

cliffs and bed of which the Triassic rocks do not occur, but in their 
stead a series of blue and gray 'grindstone grits' of an earlier 
formation. In this region the marshes situated well up towards 
the head of the tide, where the red soil of the uplands has been 
mingled with the gray tidal mud, are good, while those lower down 
are of inferior quality and less enduring. Efforts are being made 
to renew and improve these inferior tracts by admitting the tide 
upon them. 

''In general, however, the necessity for periodic innundations 
by the muddy waters of the bay in order to maintain the produc- 
tiveness of the marshes, as implied in the passage from Evan- 
geline : — 

'Dikes that the hand of the farmer had raised with labour 

incessant 
Shut out the turbulent tides; but at stated seasons the 

flood-gates 
Opened and welcomed the sea to wander at will 
o'er the meadows' — 

not only does not exist, but on the contrary, some two or three 
years are required for the grass roots to recover from the injury 
done them by the salt water, when, as occasionally happens, an 
accident to the protecting dikes admits the unwelcome flood. The 
exceedingly fine texture of the soil, and its consequent compactness 
and retentiveness of moisture, render it for the most part quite 
unsuitable for the production of root crops, and at the same time 
-adapt it admirably for the growth of hay and of cereals, especially 
oats, barley, and wheat. As a rule, however, the succession of 
grass crops is interrupted only at intervals by a single crop of 
grain. The reproductive power of the grass roots declines per- 
ceptibly with long-continued cropping, so that a renewal of the 
stock by re-seeding is occasionally necessary. For this purpose 
the marsh is plowed in the autumn or spring and new seed is sown ; 
but to avoid the loss of a season, since grass does not mature for 
-harvesting the first year, grain is also sown and a large yield is 



14 KING'S COUNTY 

usually obtained. This plowing and re-seeding, at intervals often 
of many years, is the only cultivation the soil receives or requires. 
There is no reason to suppose that abundant harvests of grain 
might not be obtained annually for an indefinite period, but as this 
would involve annual tilling, the hay crop is more profitable. 

''Along the river estuaries the encroachment of the land upon 
the sea is in continual progress, so that there are always con- 
siderable areas of unreclaimed salt marsh, the lower portions of 
which are flooded every day, while the higher portions are covered 
only by the highest tides. The reclamation of such new marsh is 
effected by building around its seaward margin a wall or dike 
of mud to prevent all tidal overflow. After two or three years 
the salt will have sufficiently disappeared to permit the growth of 
a crop of wheat, and in a year or two more the best quality of 
English grass will grow. At the head of Cumberland Basin an 
interesting experiment in the reclamation of worthless land has 
been successfully tried. Large areas of swamp, and in some in- 
stances shallow lakes, have been connected with the tidal waters 
of the neighboring rivers by channels cut through intervening 
ridges of upland, thus effecting the double purpose of draining 
and of admitting the mud-laden tides. In this way, in five or ten 
years many acres of worthless swamp have been converted into 
valuable dike land. 

"The use of marsh mud as a fertilizer is very general among- 
farmers to whom it is accessible. It is taken in the autumn or 
winter from the bank of some tidal creek or river, where the 
daily depositions can soon replace it, and is spread directly on the 
upland. Its effects are two-fold, it enriches with valuable supplies 
of plant food the soil to which it is applied, and it greatly im- 
proves the texture of all the light and open soils, making them 
more compact and firm, and so more retentive of moisture and 
of those ingredients which are otherwise easily washed away. This 
permanent effect upon the physical character of the soil which the 
marsh mud produces renders undesirable its application to clayey 
soils already compact and firm and moist enough, for it makes them 



KING'S COUNTY 15 

more difficult to work, and more impervious to atmospheric influ- 
ences. To well drained hay fields, however, which need but little 
cultivation the mud may be advantageously applied, even though 
the soil be naturally stiff and heavy. 

"The French settlers were the first dike-builders here. They 
brought the art with them from the Netherlands; and to this day 
no other class of Provincial workmen is as skillful as the Acadian 
French. It was no doubt the existence of these vast areas of marsh 
land, whose potential value was even then clearly seen, that induced 
the first New World immigrants to settle about the Bay of Fundy 
shores; and it was these same broad, fertile marshes, left unoccu- 
pied by the expulsion of the Acadian French, that attracted the 
New England settlers, whose descendants now derive from them an. 
income aggregating not less than a million dollars every year." 



CHAPTER II 
THE MICMAC INDIANS 

Pf the two great families of Indian tribes, the Algonquins and 
Iroquois, that inhabited the North American continent when Euro- 
peans discovered it, the Algonquins extended over part of Virginia 
and Pennsylvania, New Jersey, south-eastern New York, New Eng- 
land, the maritime provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, 
and the province of Ontario. They were spread, also, along the 
shores of the Great Lakes, and throughout the northern regions be- 
yond, and they occupied Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana, 
and in detached bands ' ' ranged the lonely hunting grounds of Ken- 
tucky". In New England, where the Algonquins were most numer- 
ous, were the tribes known as Mohicans, Narragansetts, Penaeooks, 
Pequots, and Wampanoags, and further east the Passamaquoddies 
or Etchemins, and Penobscots. 

Inhabiting eastern Maine and New Brunswick were the 
Maliseets, and throughout the country bordering on the Gulf of St. 
Lawrence, from Baie Chaleurs to Nova Scotia, including Prince 
Edward Island and Cape Breton, the Souriquois or Micmacs, which 
tribe in later times spread also into Newfoundland. The boundary 
line between the territories of the Micmacs and Maliseets, says 
Professor Ganong, began at Quaco, east of St. John, in New Bruns- 
wick, and followed the water-shed which divides the rivers flowing 
into the Gulf of St. Lawrence from those flowing into the River St. 
John. It ran, that is, from Quaco to the head of the Kennebecasis, 
thence to the head of the Washademoak, thence to the head of 
Salmon River, thence away to the west, to the head of the Miramichi, 
thence to the head of the Tobique, and thence to the head of the 
Restigouche; following everywhere the height of land, and giving 
all streams, large and small, on the Gulf side, to the Micmacs, and 



THE MICMAC INDIANS 17 

all on the side of the St. John waters to the Maliseets. Similar 
boundaries separated the Maliseets from the Penobscots and Pas- 
samaquoddies on the west. 

The Micmacs were larger framed and had flatter features than 
the Maliseets, but the habits and characteristics of the two tribes 
did not greatly differ. Both subsisted chiefly by hunting and fish- 
ing, but both had some rude agriculture, and both, as far back 
as the early part of the seventeenth century had cultivated corn, 
squash, and tobacco. From Marc Lescarbot in the beginning, and 
Nicholas Denys in the latter part, of the seventeenth century, and 
from Diereville, in 1700, we learn much regarding the Micmacs 
at that early time. To be a good hunter was the supreme ambition of 
every young man in the tribe, for on his skill in hunting his stand- 
ing with his people largely depended. In ancient times the country 
was full of moose, caribou, and wild fowl, and these furnished the 
Indians liberally with food. Beavers, martins, otters, lynxes, and 
other small animals, were also most abundant, and from them were 
got the valuable furs that formed the chief article of commerce 
between the Micmacs and the French. 

Before the conversion of the Micmac tribe by French Eoman 
Catholic missionaries, the Nova Scotia Indians are said to have 
worshipped the sun as their creator, believing also in a demon 
called Mendon, whom they frequently tried to propitiate with sac- 
rifices and prayers. They made offerings, likewise, to departed 
spirits, and looked forward for themselves at death to happy hunt- 
ing grounds, where fatigue and hunger would be unknown, and 
where game would be abundant and easily got. The marriage cere- 
mony among them, wherever any existed, was simple, and was con- 
nected, as among all peoples, barbarous and civilized, with feasts 
and merry-making. Funeral ceremonies, however, were conducted 
with great demonstrations of grief, with loud wailings, and smear- 
ing of the face with soot. Dead bodies were dried or embalmed 
and then buried, pipes, knives, axes, bows and arrows, snow-shoes, 
moccasins, and skins being put with them in the grave. The people 
were keenly alive to the supernatural, and their mythology and 



18 KING'S COUNTY 

legends, which Charles G. Leland finds strikingly like those of the 
Scandinavians, show that almost all natural objects were invested 
by them with mind and soul. They were superstitious to the last 
degree, putting implicit faith in the incantations of jugglers, and 
the charms of medicine men. They had much less warlike pro- 
pensities than their neighbors the Maliseets, but they regarded 
valor in war as the noblest characteristic they could be possessed 
of and on occasion would fight bravely and well. They were gen- 
erous, hospitable, chaste, and in common intercourse had a code of 
etiquette, which they strictly observed. 

In all parts of the Nova Scotian peninsula the tribe had favorite 
camping places ; in winter, when the snows were deep they tramped 
from place to place through the woods on snow-shoes, in single file, 
men and women alike having heavy loads strapped on their shoul- 
ders and dragging behind them long, narrow sledges or sleds. 
On these sleds were piled skins, rude axes and kettles, dried moose- 
meat, and rolls of birch-bark for covering their wigwams when 
they should again encamp. In a little book of sketches published 
some twenty years ago, Miss Frame, a Nova Scotian writer, gives 
an imaginary but perfectly truthful picture of a Micmac encamp- 
ment. The Indians were encamped in the dense forest on the edge 
of a little brook which flowed into a larger river. "Here some of the 
women were busy sewing new and repairing old birch-bark canoes. 
In this primitive ship-yard neither broad-axe nor caulking-mallet 
was required. The framework was made of split ash, shaped with 
a knife and moulded by hand; this was covered with sheets of 
white birch-bark, sewed round the wood-work with the tough root- 
lets of trees. The wigwams were formed of poles stuck into the 
ground and secured at the top by a withe. This circular inclosure 
was covered with birch-bark; a blanket or skin covered the aper- 
ture which served for a door; and the centre was occupied by the 
fire, the struggling smoke of which found its way out at the top. 
Round the fire, boughs were laid, which served the family for seats. 
Dogs snored around the camps, and papooses lay sleeping in the 
cradles strapped to their mothers' backs, their brown faces up- 



THE MICMAC INDIANS 19 

turned to the sun. One mother sat apart, nursing a dying babe. 
She had prepared a tiny carrying belt, a little pail, and a paddle, 
to aid her child in the spirit land. Beside the spring some women 
were preparing the feast for the congregated warriors. Over the 
fire were suspended cauldrons containing a savory stew of porcu- 
pine, carri^boo, and duck. Salmon were roasting before the fires, 
the fish being inserted, wedge fashion, into a split piece of ash 
some two feet in length, crossed by other splits, its end planted 
firmly into the earth at a convenient distance from the fire". Until 
the middle of the 19th century small encampments similar to this 
imaginary one, might have been found, summer or winter, in 
several places in King's County, one of the chief spots, latterly, 
being the ''Pine Woods", in Cornwallis, near Kentville, the county 
town. 

On the mythology of the Micmacs and Maliseets, as of the neigh- 
bouring kindred tribes, the Passamaquoddies and Penobscots, Mr. 
Charles G. Leland has written at length. These tribes, which to- 
gether with the St. Francis Indians of Canada and some smaller 
clans call themselves the Wabanaki, ''have in common", he says, 
"the traditions of a grand mythology, the central figure of which 
is a demigod or hero, who, while he is always great, consistent, and 
benevolent, and never devoid of dignity, presents traits which are 
very much more like those of Odin and Thor, with not a little of 
Pantagruel than anything in the character of the Chippewa Man- 
obozho, or the Iroquois Hiawatha." This demigod, who is called 
Glooskap, like the Norse deities combines giant-like strength with 
tender feeling and a light but never cruel or merely fantastic hu- 
mour. In King's County, especially, conspicuous traces of his power 
abound. While he roamed the province incessantly, encamping in 
many different spots, his chief abiding place was the crest of 
Blomidon. Before his time the beavers, who were then huge, pow- 
erful beasts, had built a great dam across the strait from Blomidon 
to the Cumberland shore, thus making Minas Basin an immense pond 
or inland sea. One day by speaking a word or by waving his wand, 
Glooscap broke the beaver dam and let the fierce Fundy tides rush 



20 KING'S COUNTY 

in, as they have ever since continued to do. Towards a beaver 
who was in hiding near, and whom the demigod wanted to frighten, 
he once tossed a few handfuUs of earth. These lodging a little to 
the eastward of Parrsborough became the Five Islands. From the 
site of old Fort Cumberland, running parallel with River Hebert 
to Parrsborough, is a ridge known by the Indians as Ou-Wokun, but 
by white men as the Boar's Back. This ridge was thrown up 
by the demigod, whose power to do physical wonders was quite 
unlimited, to make it easier for him and his companions, the old 
Noogumee, who kept his wigwam, and the boy Abistariooch or the 
Marten, who is connected with many of Glooskap's feats, to pass 
over to Parrsborough, and from thence to Cape Blomidon. It was 
Glooskap who created the spirits corresponding to elves and fair- 
ies, which inhabited the woods and lived by the shores of rivers 
and brooks. From an ash tree he created man. The names of all 
animals and birds were given by him. The turtle, his uncle, he 
changed into a man, and found a wife for. The dangerous wind- 
bird, Wuchowsen, he seized and bound fast. Certain saucy Indians 
he changed into rattlesnakes, giant sorcerers he conquered, whales 
let him ride on their backs, loons became his willing messengers. 
At last, however, he withdrew far into the west, and although 
the Indians long expected that some day he would return, he has 
never come back and his home, the high crest of Blomidon, remains 
lonely and desolate still. 

When the French explorers came to Acadia the Micmacs seem 
to have welcomed them at once, and during the whole period of 
French occupancy of Acadia these children of the forest kept loyal 
to the first European usurpers of the soil. The Micmacs aiso took 
kindly to the religion of the French, the baptism of the aged Chief 
Membertou and his family at Port Royal, in 1610, being followed 
in a few years by the conversion, chiefly under RecoUet friars, of the 
whole tribe to Roman Catholicism. But towards the English, dur- 
ing this period, the Micmacs showed little love. As the end of 
French rule in Acadia drew near, under the influence of the wily 
priest Le Loutre and others of his spirit, they committed occasional 



THE MICMAC INDIANS 21 

depredations on English residents in King's and other counties, 
and by the English garrison at Windsor, as indeed by the planters 
and their families after the New England immigration, with good 
reason were distrusted and feared. In 1720 John Alden, a New 
England trader, was robbed of his goods at Minas by eleven In- 
dians, In 1722, during the progress of Lovewell's war, the Mic- 
macs captured several vessels in the Bay of Fundy. Two years 
later, a party of seventy or eighty Micmacs and Maliseets com- 
bined assembled at Minas with hostile intentions. In complicity 
with them, it was charged, were two priests, Father Felix, the 
Minas Cure, and Father Charlemagne the Annapolis Koyal priest, 
and as a result of the charge the two cures were banished from the 
province. In 1749, about three hundred Micmacs and Maliseets 
attacked the English fort at Minas, but effected no injury. As 
usual, the French were accused, perhaps justly, of having inspired 
this fruitless attack. 

For many years the Rev. Silas Tertius Rand, D. D., D. C. L., 
a native of Cornwallis, laboured as a Protestant missionary among 
the Nova Scotia Indians, In the matter of doctrinal religion Dr. 
Rand's mission was not successful, for few if any of the Micmacs 
through his labours were permanently won to the Protestant faith, 
but to Dr. Rand's scholarly enthusiasm for philological research is 
due the preservation of the Micmac language and many of the 
Micmac legends. Dr, Rand died in 1889, but shortly before his 
death his distinguished service to native American philology and 
mythology was suitably recognized, his Micmac dictionary being 
subsidized and given to the press by the Canadian Government, 

The whole province of Acadia, together with the island of 
Cape Breton, seems to have been divided by the Micmacs into seven 
districts, the greatest of these comprising the whole of Cape Breton, 
and the other six extending eastwardly in two groups of three each. 
Of these groups, the right hand one took in Pictou, Memramcook, 
and Restigouche, the left the country from Canseau to Yarmouth, 
this latter, of course, containing the present County of King's. 
Originally each of these districts had its chief, but the chief of the 



22 KING'S COUNTY 

district which included Cape Breton was regarded as the head of 
all. Some of the Micmac names of places in King's County were 
the following: Blomidon, Owhogegechk, ''Dogwood grove", and 
also Ulkogunchechk, "Bark doubled and sewed together"; Cape 
Split Plekteok, ''Huge handspikes for breaking open a beaver 
dam"; the strait at Blomidon, Pleegun, "Opening in a broken bea- 
ver dam"; Cornwallis river, Chijkwtook, "Narrow river"; Canard 
river, Apchechknmoochwakode, "Resort of black duck"; Gasper- 
eau river, Magapfikegechk, "Tumbling over large rocks"; Kent- 
ville, Penooek; Aylesford Bog, Kohetek, "The Beaver"; Long 
Island, Mesadek, "Extending far out"; Mud Bridge (Wolfville), 
Mtahan, "Mud-catfish catching ground"; Oak Point, Cornwallis, 
Upkwawegun, "A house covered with spruce rinds"; Partridge 
Island, Pulowechica, "A partridge island"; Pereau, Wojeechk, 
"A white signal seen from afar" (a waterfall showing white in the 
distance) ; Starr's Point, Nesoogicitk, "It lies on the water between 
two other points." 

Although the present King's County has never been without 
a few small Indian encampments there is no Indian "reservation" 
within its limits, and it is doubtful if, since the English settle- 
ment at least, more than two or three hundred Micmacs have lived 
here at any one time. On the earliest census reports of the King's 
County Indians we cannot safely rely, nor are later reports much 
more certainly correct. The census of 1871 gave the whole num- 
ber of Micmacs in the province as only 1,666. In 1901, King's 
County is said to have had as its share of the Indian population, the 
very insignificant number of twenty-eight. 



CHAPTER III 
THE ACADIAN FRENCH 

Ever since the writing of Longfellow's Evangeline, an atmo- 
sphere of peculiar romance has encircled the country about Minas 
Basin, in Nova Scotia's garden County of King's. Except Scott's 
Lady of the Lake no modern narrative poem has done so much 
to excite interest in a special locality as the famous poem which 
perpetuates the loves and sorrows of the simple French peasant 
folk who in the 18th century were rudely torn from thrifty homes 
in a favoured province, and dragged forcibly into suffering exile 
in other colonies, where as miserable paupers they were hated and 
shunned. In the very names, Acadia or Acadie, and Grand Pre, 
a certain compelling poetry for most men resides, and the opening 
lines of Longfellow 's poem : 

"In the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minas, 
Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand Pre 
Lay in the fruitful valley " — 

have awakened multitudes to feel the charm that lies in the ancient 
musical nomenclature of this lovely region. No less have they 
tended to arouse interest in the real beauty that dwells in the rural 
landscape about this peaceful inland bay. When one visits the 
region one will not find very near the Basin the soft shade of 
** murmuring pines and hemlocks", nor will one see waving in the 
sunlight the Acadians' pleasant fields of flax and corn, but one will 
find the vast shimmering dyke-lands, the calm Basin's surface of 
matchless turquoise blue; and from the hills above the spot where 
the Minas Acadians' chief village stood one will see a panorama of 
unusually varied beauty unfold. 

The first voyager of whom we know anything, who visited 



24 KING'S COUNTY 

this part of Acadia, was the famous explorer, De Monts. In 1604, 
from Port Royal, with Champlain and Poutrincourt he sailed up 
la Bale Francoise, as the party then named the Bay of Fundy, and 
at Mines, which they probably so named because of specimens of 
copper they saw at Cape D'Or, and glittering purple amethysts 
they picked up on the shore below Blomidon, they disembarked. 
In 1606, Champlain a second time went to Minas, and in his "Voy- 
ages" we have the following account: "We went", he says, "as 
far as the head of this bay, and saw nothing but certain white stones 
suitable for making lime, yet they are found only in small quan- 
tities. "We saw also on some islands a great number of sea gulls. 
We captured as many of them as we wished. We made the tour 
of the bay, in order to go to Port aux Mines, where I had pre- 
viously been, and whither I conducted Sieur de Poutrincourt, who 
collected some little pieces of copper with great difficulty. All 
this bay has a circuit of perhaps twenty leagues, with a small river 
at its head, which is very sluggish and contains but little water. 
There are many other little brooks, and some places where there 
are good harbours at high tide, which rises here five fathoms. In 
one of these harbours, three or four leagues north of Cap de Pou- 
trincourt (Cape Split), we found a very old cross, covered with 
moss and almost rotten, a plain indication that before this there 
had been Christians there. All of this country is covered with 
dense forests, and with some exceptions is not very attractive ' '. 

In 1607, Poutrincourt again visited Minas, but Port Royal, 
which had been founded in 1605, being at the close of this year 
temporarily abandoned and every European inhabitant removed, 
we have no further mention of the district until 1612. In the lat- 
ter part of August, 1607, Monsieur Bieneourt, son of Poutrincourt, 
who had returned to Acadia two years before, inheriting his father's 
love of adventure went from Port Royal to "Mines and Chinictou" 
in a small shallop, so that he might see what the country further 
up the Bay of Fundy was like. A priest. Father Biard, probably 
a Capucin, accompanied him, and at "Chinictou" they saw "fine 
meadows reaching as far as the eye could see ' '. 



THE ACADIAN FRENCH 25 

It is possible that some few settlers may have found their way 
to Minas before the destruction of the French settlements by Cap- 
tain Argal in 1613, but of this there is no record, and there was- 
no attempt at resettling Acadia under English auspices until 1621, 
when James I of England granted Acadia to his favourite, Sir- 
William Alexander, also a Scotsman, whom he afterward created 
Earl of Stirling. It is in Alexander's grant that the name lilova 
Scotia first appears. In August, 1622, Alexander sailed for his; 
new dominions, and after this the ownership of Acadia was con- 
tinually in dispute. From Sir William the province passed to Sir 
David Kirk, one of the early merchant adventurers of Canada. By 
the treaty of Saint Germains it was restored to France, and Isaae 
De Razilly was appointed its lieutenant-governor. At De Razilly's 
death, Monsieur d' Aulnay Charnisay was made governor, and then 
began the long period of strife between him and Charles de la Tour,, 
in the climax of which figures so proudly the name of one of the^ 
true heroines of modern history, the brave Madame de la Tour. 

After the death of Charnisay, Major Eobert Sedgwick, one. 
of Cromwell's officers, the founder of the well-known New Eng- 
land Sedgwick family, was ordered by the Protector, who believed 
that Acadia belonged to England by right of discovery, to seize 
the French forts and take possession of the country. The mastery 
being gained by the English, Sir Thomas Temple was appointed 
governor, and the country was divided between Sir Charles St. 
Stephen, Charles de la Tour, Thomas Temple, and William Crowne. 
In 1667, by the treaty of Breda, Nova Scotia was again ceded to 
France, but the little progress in colonization made from year to- 
year, is shown by the fact that in 1671 the entire French population 
of the province did not exceed four hundred, and that in 1686, it 
was not more than nine hundred and twelve, this number being- 
shortly after reduced to eight hundred and six. Under Sir William 
Phipps, in 1690, England again achieved the mastery of Acadia^ 
but seven years later, by the Peace of Ryswick, it was once more 
given to France. 

The first permanent settlers in Acadia, says Placide Gaudet, 



26 KING'S COUNTY 

were the people who have been called de Razilly's "three hundred 
hommes d^elite^'. These came in 1632, and were joined by other 
immigrants brought by Charnisay between 1639 and 1649. In 1651 
more settlers came with Charles de St. Etienne de la Tour, and still 
later, at various times, a few fresh groups increased the population. 
These people were chiefly from Rochelle, Saintonge, and Poitou, 
a district on the west coast of France, now within the modern de- 
partment of Vendee and Charente Inferieure. Their native coun- 
try was a country of marshes, from which the sea was kept out by 
artificial dykes, and in the new province to which they migrated 
their intimate knowledge of dyke building soon found room for 
exercise. The rich marshes on the shores of Annapolis Basin and 
along the Annapolis river attracted them much more than the 
forest covered uplands, and as early as 1672, Denys says, the Port 
Royal marshes under their tillage were producing great quantities 
of wheat. In 1671 a census was taken of the Acadia and Cape 
Breton French, and the return showed at Port Royal, ninety-eight 
families, numbering three hundred and sixty-three souls, at Pub- 
nieo fourteen persons, at Cape Negro fourteen, at Musquodoboit 
thirteen; and at St. Peter's, in Cape Breton, seven, and Riviere aux 
Rochelois three. 

The settlement of Minas was begun shortly before 1680. Of 
its founding we have a detailed account by Rameau de Saint 
Pere in his Une Colonie Feodale en Amerique L^Acadie, published 
in 1889. Towards 1680, Rameau says, two inhabitants of Port 
Royal, Pierre Melanson and Pierre Terriau, the former of whom, 
a tailor as well as farmer, seems also to have borne the name La 
Verdure, quite independently migrated from Port Royal to the 
country about Minas Basin. Both men were in comfortable circum- 
stances, and both were sufficiently enterprising to see the oppor- 
tunities Grand Pre offered for the further improvement of their 
fortunes. Melanson was a man of about forty-five and was the 
father of five young children; Terriau was only twenty-six, but he 
also had recently been married. Near Melanson, at Port Royal, 
lived his brother Charles, one of the most prosperous colonists 



THE ACADIAN FRENCH 27 

there, his wife's brothers, the Messieurs D'Entreraont, seigneurs of 
Pobomeoup (Pubnico), and his son-in-law, Jacques de la Tour, but 
none of them seems to have had any idea of accompanying him. 
Melanson, though he had all the energy necessary for a successful 
pioneer, was of a somewhat morose and churlish disposition, and to 
that fact, Kameau thinks, is due the comparative isolation in which 
for a good while he remained on his Grand Pre farm. 

Unlike Melanson, Terriau was open-hearted, genial, and frank, 
and about him, on the banks of the Saint Antoine, where he located, 
a stream which Rameau decribes as one of the loveliest streams 
flowing into the Basin of Minas, settled also a number of his rel- 
atives and friends. Terriau 's wife was Celine Landry, of another 
Port Royal family, and with their sister and her husband also 
migrated to Minas, Claude and Antoine Landry, and probably 
Etienne Hebert and Claude Boudrot, all of whom were married 
and presumably had children. Shortly after the settlement began, 
Terriau sent to Port Royal for one of his nephews, Jean Terriau, 
and about the same time Martin Aucoin, Philippe Pinet, and Fran- 
Qois Lapierre, the last two, new comers from Prance, joined the 
group. 

In 1686, four years from the migration of these men, in Melan- 
son 's neighborhood there were still only two or three families, but 
in Terriau 's settlement there were seven families, comprising thirty- 
five persons. During the next seven years, from 1686 to 1793, the 
region attracted settlers in such numbers that the population in- 
creased six-fold. Census returns give the population of Minas in 
1686 as 11 families, comprising 57 souls ; in 1693, as 55 families, com- 
prising 307 souls; in 1701, as 79 families, comprising 498 souls. 
Following the farmers came a tailor, Frangois Rimbaut, son of an 
old tailor at Port Royal, a blacksmith, Celestin Andre, a man newly 
arrived from France, a physician, Amand Bugeant, also lately from 
France, but now the son-in-law of Pierre Melanson, near whom 
he established himself; and two or three sailors, who no doubt 
did their part in establishing the export trade to Louisburg and 
Port Royal that before long reached such comparative importance. 



28 KING'S COUNTY 

By tlie beginning of the 18th century other settlements had been 
made, at Riviere aux Canards, across the Grand Habitant, and 
at Piziquid, Cobequid, Chipody, and Peticodiac, the last two being 
in what is now the province of New Brunswick. 

It is difficult to define the exact limits either of the district 
of Minas, or of the special part of that district known as Grand Pre. 
In general, says J. F. Herbin, Minas may be said to have included 
all the land bordering on the Gaspereau, Cornwallis (Grand Habi- 
tant), Canard, Habitant (Petit Habitant), and Pereau rivers. This 
covers the present territory of Avonport, Hortonville, Grand Pre,. 
Gaspereau, Wolfville, Port Williams, New Minas, Starr's Point, Can- 
ard, Canning, and Pereau. The French settlement of Piziquid 
(Fort Edward, now Windsor) was for a time included in Minas^ 
but this before long became a separate district. In the township 
of Horton, Minas extended as far west as Kentville, the site of which 
town it included, but it is doubtful if beyond Kentville there were 
ever any French houses or farms. In Cornwallis it included Church 
Street, as far west as Robinson's Corner, Upper Dyke Village being 
perhaps its western limit here. As the settlement on both sides of 
the Grand Habitant river increased and the hamlets became more 
numerous, the Horton part of the district was usually exclusively 
known as Minas, the Cornwallis district being known as Riviere aux 
Canards. 

The special part of Minas in Horton designated Grand Pre, 
was undoubtedly of much wider extent than the mere village or 
hamlet of that name. Its limits were possibly nearly coterminous 
with those of the present Grand Pre, which includes the country 
between Long Island on the North, Gaspereau river on the south, 
Horton Landing on the east, and Wolfville on the west. The village 
of Grand Pre was evidently very closely settled, — in comparatively 
recent years, on the farm of the late Robert L. Stewart, along the 
line of the railway no less than twenty-eight French cellars could 
be seen, thirteen of these rather close together. At the time of the 
expulsion, in the district of Grand Pre, 225 houses, 276 barns, 11 
mills, and a large number of outhouses or sheds, were burned. 



THE ACADIAN FRENCH 29 

In eighty-four years from the beginning of the settlement of 
Minas, the Riviere aux Canards district comprised twenty-one ham- 
lets, with from three to eighty inhabitants each ; the Minas district 
comprised seventeen hamlets, with from three to ninety-four inhab- 
itants each. According to Herbin, the names of the Canard ham- 
lets were : Antoine, Aueoine, Brun, Claude, Claude Landry, Claude 
Terriau, Comeau, De Landry, Dupuis, Francois, Granger, Hebert, 
Jean Terriau, Michel, Navie, Pinous, Poirier, Saulnier, Trahan, The 
names of the Minas hamlets were : Comeau, De Petit or Gotro, 
Gaspereau, Grand Le Blanc, Grand Pre, Granger, Hebert, Jean Le 
Blanc, Jean Terriau, La Coste, Landry, Melanson, Michel, Pierre 
Le Blanc, Pinour, Pinue, Richard. 

The largest hamlets on the Grand Pre or south side of the Grand 
Habitant were : De Petit or Gotro (the chief village of this dis- 
trict), Pierre Le Blanc, Michel, Melanson (the largest settlement 
of what is now Gaspereau), Grand Le Blanc, Gaspereau, Jean Le 
Blanc, and Grand Pre. The largest hamlets on the Canard or north 
side of the Grand Habitant were : Claude, with eighty inhabitants, 
Aueoine, with seventy-seven, Comeau, Claude Landry, and Hebert, 
with seventy-four each; Dupuis, Jean Terriau, Brun, Trahan, and 
Saulnier. The exact location of the largest Canard villages is said 
to have been at Town Plot, Boudro's Point (Starr's Point, the steep 
bank at Town Plot being called Boudro's Bank), Blenn's Point, 
Hamilton's Corner, and the late Mr. William Thomas' farm. There 
was a settlement about half way between Mr. Andrew McDonald's 
place, at Upper Dyke Village, and the Gibson Woods road; one 
which seems to have extended from the Gesner place, or the Beck- 
with (now Mrs. William Young's) place, to the Isaac Reid place; 
and one on the George Borden place, where a few years ago French 
cellars were said still to exist. On Wilson Pierson's farm on 
Brooklyn or Shadow street, once owned by Mr. John Lyons, was 
an Acadian hamlet, and on the site of an old French cellar Mr. Lyons 
built his house. French orchards are remembered as having existed 
on the Ward Eaton place, the Gesner place, the Beckwith place, 
and the farm of the late Isaac Reid. In some places the houses 



30 KING'S COUNTY 

clustered more or less closely, but often, as in the case of the dwel- 
lings of the New England settlers who succeeded the French, the 
houses stood far apart. 

The settlement known as "New Minas", between Kent- 
ville and Wolfville, must have been a somewhat important hamlet. 
A letter from Mr. Edward Seaman to the late Dr. Brechin gives 
traditions concerning this settlement that are probably based on 
fact, though no historical documents known to the author men- 
tion a chapel or a priest at this point. Mr. Seaman says : 

''On what was formerly known as the Best Farm, now owned 
by Amos Griffin, in New Minas, was a French village, where there 
was a chapel and a resident priest. Most of the cellars have been 
filled, but the foundations of the chapel, say 28x36 feet, are still 
partly visible, as are also the supposed site of the priest's house, this 
house being longer than the average. By the side of the brook, about 
fifty rods from the chapel, some of the first English settlers found 
a set of blacksmith's tools buried. They found also, a mile or two 
south, in the woods, remains of a stone building, which has always 
been known since as the 'French fort'. Very few traces can now 
be seen except in rough places, of the old French roads. North of 
Robert Redden 's, across the hollow running east and west, the 
French road can be traced yet. It can be seen again, crossing the 
hollow east of Mr. Silas Elderkin's, about forty rods south of the 
present road. Near the western limit of the Thomas Barss farm^ 
just off the post road, two or three cellars have always been visible. 
Henry Terry's father built over a French cellar the house where 
the Hon. Thomas Lewis Dodge long lived. I have heard of a cellar 
near Herbert Denison's, and that was probably as far west on this 
side of the river as the Acadians built. About 1827 a Frenchman 
travelling from French Town (Clare, Digby County) to Cum- 
berland, staid all night at my father's and told the following story: 
'Almost at the head of the tide was a French village. It had a. 
chapel and a priest. "When the Acadians were summoned by 
"Winslow to Grand Pre the people of this village did not go, 
but taking from their houses what they could, went south into 



THE ACADIAN FRENCH SI 

the woods, about two miles. There for eleven months they lived in 
huts, building, however, a stone house for the priest. Always hop- 
ing the French Avould recover Acadia, they used often to go along 
on the hills to the westward, above Greenwich and Wolfville, and 
look eagerly across the Basin to see whether the French colours 
were visible there. Finally they became discouraged, and leaving 
Minas went to the western part of the province'. The man said 
that his father, who was then about eighty years of age, was one 
of the children who with their parents underwent this experience, 
and that he remembered the facts well". 

Of the French settlement of New Minas, the late Mr. Edmund 
J. Cogswell once wrote: ''Minas, with its dykes, consisted of the 
village along the banks of the upland, with the Grand Pre lying 
in front, and with Long Island and Boot Island bounding it on 
the north. As new lands for settlement were wanted, some of the 
inhabitants went up the Cornwallis river and found a place that 
seemed curiously familiar. There was a piece of marsh somewhat 
resembling the Grand Pre, with Oak Island lying outside it. On 
the edge was a similar chance for settlement to that furnished by 
the upland that bordered the Grand Pre. They, therefore, put in 
short dykes at each end of Oak Island, reclaimed a considerable 
piece of marsh, built themselves some houses, and called their 
settlement 'New Minas'. In later times French cellars have been 
numeroias here, and we know from the vitrified debris that has 
been found that at the expulsion the houses above them were 
burned. The centre of the hamlet was what afterward became 
known as the Foster farm. The French burying ground is snid 
to have been on a little knoll near the railroad track. To the south 
and east of the 'Griffin house' a chapel was built, part of the foun- 
dations of which can still be seen in the bushes. It would seem 
as if there was a burying ground here, too, and tradition says that 
not far off there was a mill. After the removal of the Acadians 
the English built their village further south, on the military road, 
but although they left the old site they retained the name, 'New 
Minas' ". 



32 KING'S COUNTY 

When the Acadians were expelled their buildings as a rule, 
throughout the whole of Minas were burned, but in a few eases, 
at least, barns were left standing. In testimony of this is a state- 
ment once made to the author by the Hon. Samuel Chipman, who 
died in 1891 at the age of a hundred and one, that he himself re- 
membered a French barn still standing when he was a boy, on what 
is now the land of Mr. Boss Chipman. On the Stewart property at 
Grand Pre, long after the New England settlers came, a French 
barn still stood, and likewise one on the Albert Harris place in 
Horton. As a rule, wherever in Horton or Cornwallis willow trees 
were conspicuously present in the early part of the 19th century, 
French hamlets had existed, for the willow, imported from France, 
seems to have been the Acadians' favourite ornamental tree. With- 
in the memory of living men a large number of French cellars have 
been visible in these two townships and it is probable that even at 
this late day some few of them remain. 

In a comparatively short time after its settlement, the district 
•of Minas became by all means the most prosperous part of the whole 
Acadian land. The census of 1686 ascribes to it eighty-three acres, 
probably of upland, under cultivation, and the people's posses- 
sions as including ninety horned cattle, twenty-one sheep, and sixty- 
seven swine. For weapons of defence, it says, they had twenty 
guns. In 1714 the population numbered 878, and at the time of the 
-expulsion, according to Winslow, 2,743. In Winslow's account 
it is stated that the people were then possessed of 5,600 sheep, 4,000 
hogs, and 500 horses. How soon the Minas French began to build 
dykes we do not know, but it is estimated that before they were 
expelled they had dyked, of the Grand Pre marsh some 2,100 acres 
and along the Canard river no less than 2,000 acres. 

In road building also, here as well as at other points in Acadia, 
the French were far from inactive. In 1720 the Port Royal people, 
and probably in conjunction with them the people of Minas, had 
begun a road, on the basis, no doubt, of old Indian trails, between 
Port Royal and the Minas settlements, but they were stopped by 
■Governor Phillips, who feared that there was some sinister in- 



THE ACADIAN FRENCH 33 

tention in their work. Nine years later the enterprise, thus ar- 
rested, was still in abeyance, but before the expulsion passable 
roads had been made from Minas, westward to Annapolis Royal, 
and eastward to Windsor and so to Halifax. On the north side of 
the Cornwallis river a road was made from Town Plot to Church 
Street, where the Fox Hill road now runs. The present road from 
Port "Williams to St. John's Church, for a considerable distance 
from the river at least, was also a French road. Through the "Dry 
Hollow" a road ran from Cornwallis into Kentville, a little to the 
west of the present main Cornwallis road. This road probably be- 
gan at Centre ville, near the French hamlet on the "Gibson "Woods" 
road, passed through Steam Mill "Village, south-west, by Harris 
Vaughn's, through the Kentville Trotting Park, near the present 
Aldershot Camp grounds, and then crossing "Gallows Hill" near 
the spot where the house of the late Charles Jones long stood, came 
into Kentville a little above the present Cornwallis bridge. 

The following description of the French roads in Cornwallis 
is taken, except for many necessary changes in expression, from 
Dr. William Pitt Brechin's manuscript, written about 1890. To 
people born in the county its details though intricate, for the most 
part will be perfectly clear. The first roads, says Dr. Brechin, were 
only paths made through the woods by the Indians, and were zig- 
zag in their course, from one point of high ground to the next. 
From time to time, as the need of more passable roads became 
urgent, these paths were improved and widened, until they became 
fairly good highways. When it was necessary to cross ridges they 
always crossed, not straight, but diagonally. The main roads of 
Cornwallis ran parallel with the rivers, in the most natural way, 
and as close as possible to these streams. Of course, as the various 
dykes were constructed across the Canard river, the direction of 
the roads, for obvious reasons, was somewhat changed. The road to 
the French settlement near Mr. William Thomas', must have been in 
use prior to the building of the Grand Dyke, for before the Grand and 
Wellington dykes were constructed all roads must have gone round 
the head of the tides. After leaving the settlement this road prob- 



S4 KING'S COUNTY 

ably wound round the meadow that makes up on the farm formerly- 
owned by Simpkins Walton, and passing the orchard on what was 
formerly Mr. Ward Eaton's place, met the present Canard road. 
Following this road till it came to the top of the hill at the Baptist 
Church, it descended the hill and passed a spot at the foot, about 
twenty yards south of an apple tree, near the willow trees on the 
easterly side of Mr. Perez M. Brechin's farm, where it is said an 
Acadian blacksmith shop stood. It then led toward the dyke on 
the easterly side of Mr. Brechin's farm, took in the settlement on 
the John Harris place, went westward across the brow of the hill 
on the Brechin place, passed another stray cellar or two in its 
course, went on till it reached the residence of George C. Pineo, 
and after the completion of the Middle Dyke, crossed that and met 
the French road that followed the course of the present Church 
Street. Then it continued toward Kentville, running back of the 
Hon. Samuel Chipman's place, at Chipman's Corner. Before the 
completion of the Middle Dyke this road undoubtedly ran where 
the road now does that leads from the George Pineo house to Mrs. 
John T. Newcomb's. 

From this point it followed round Sheffield's Brook, which it 
crossed, met the road that came up the southerly side of the Habi- 
tant river, which can be traced from the John Gibson place, went 
down on the westerly side of Sheffield's Creek, and after passing 
two French cellars came out on the west side of William Newcomb 's 
house. It then ran along the present Upper Dyke Village road 
as far as William Newcomb, Sr.'s, from there went south, after 
the Upper Dyke was constructed crossed that, and finally met the 
continuation of the Church Street road. Before the Upper Dyke 
was built it led, by the most accessible route, to Leander Crocker's, 
then bore across toward Shadow Street, passed the settlement that 
existed where the John Lyons house stands, and ran towards Kent- 
ville, across the ''Gallows Hill", and down the Dry Hollow, a little 
west of the present road. In its course the road ran through Steam 
Mill Village, south-west of Harris Vaughn's, and crossed the Corn- 
wallis river directly opposite Dry Hollow, which is about fifty rods 



THE ACADIAN FRENCH 85 

above the present bridge, at which place there is a spot that is easily 
forded. On the Horton side of the river is a gorge in the bank, 
and the road came through that, ran round the base of the nov^r 
removed "Sand Hill", and connected veith the road going west 
beyond Kentville. 

A Frenchman starting from the Pereau settlement to make a 
visit to his friends in Minas, would have gone through Canning, 
crossed the Habitant, and landed in his skiff at or near the place 
now called the ''Pickets". He would then have taken a southerly 
course, and coming to the Canard road would have followed that 
till he reached Hamilton's Corner. If his journey had been made 
after the completion of the Grand Pre Dyke, he would have crossed 
the Canard river on the cross dyke, which for part of the way 
followed the present road (though for fully a quarter of the way, 
particularly after crossing the present bridge, it lies west of this). 
If his journey had been made before the dyke was built he could 
have gone over the river in his skiff, or by way of the ford, and then, 
would have passed on, down the road to Town Plot, and have 
crossed the ferry to Minas. If he had wished to reach a part of 
Minas further up the river, he would have crossed the ferry or ford 
at the place now called Port "Williams, for tradition states that at 
both these places ferries or fords had been made. 

Concerning the roads on the Horton side of the Grand Habi- 
tant, Dr. Brechin has also much of importance to tell us. The chief 
road of Grand Pre, to the westward, ran through the present vil- 
lage of Grand Pre, north of the main highway, which it joined near 
Scott's Corner. Thence it led to Johnson's Hollow, just beyond 
the Horton Academy boarding-house, and from that point diverged 
and ran near the present rail-road to Kentville. There was a road, 
also, from the village of Grand Pre to the landing place on the 
Gaspereau river. "What is known as the "Island", where the French: 
well and the willows are, had a road running through its whole 
length. From the main village of Grand Pre a road ran south, 
over the hill, to "Wall Brook, and crossing the river at that point 
by a sunken bridge, which could be used only at low tide, proceeded 



36 KING'S COUNTY 

to "Windsor. From Kentville the main highway to Annapolis Royal 
ran parallel with the present post road, a little to the north. Pas- 
sing a French cellar, opposite a French orchard, both of which lasted 
till recent times, it reached the Col. Moore place, then crossed diag- 
onally the present road to another French cellar, again ran parallel 
with the post road, on the south, near Robert Harrington's barn; 
followed beside the post road till it reached the place once owned 
by William Harrington and afterward by Maurice Barnett, at this 
point re-crossed the main road and ran north of it, opposite John 
Harrington's, and then extended on to the Curry Brook and the 
Thomas Griffin place. Some claim that it ran from there round 
the Aylesford Bog, and others that it ran through the Bog, for 
near the place where the old Aldershot Camp Ground was, there 
is a turnpike, about fifteen feet high and perhaps twenty feet across 
the top, with ditches on both sides. It has been stated that the 
French never made turnpikes, but they must have constructed some, 
for between Kentville and the Moore place, and also at the Ayles- 
ford Bog, a turnpike, or as some might call it, a breastwork, can 
plainly be seen. That in the most advanced stage of their industrial 
development in Nova Scotia the Acadians had turnpikes is further 
shown by the fact that across the hollow, at the edge of the woods 
west of the William Harrington place, near the old brick kiln, 
there are clear traces of a French bridge. Besides the roads we 
have mentioned, there was also, doubtless, a road running from the 
Cornwallis valley over the mountain to the bay shore, probably 
either to Baxter's or Hall's harbour. All French cellars now found 
remote from the river banks were clearly on cross roads from 
one settlement to another. 

Ecclesiastically, the large district of Minas was divided into 
two parishes, St. Joseph at Riviere aux Canards, and St. Charles, at 
Grand Pre, and at each place was a wooden church with a tower 
and a bell. The church of St. Joseph stood at Chipman's Corner, 
almost on the site of the old Congregationalist-Presbyterian meet- 
ing house, which was built in 1767-8, and taken down in 1874. The 
church of St. Charles stood at Grand Pre on a little strip of land, 
which at high tide was surrounded by water, where now is a clump 



THE ACADIAN FRENCH 37 

of old willows that every visitor to the "Evangeline Country" is 
religiously shown; and an ancient well, which is supposed to have 
been digged in Acadian times. About each church was a burying- 
ground, and near the church of St. Charles was the house of the 
cure, who was the loved and feared mentor and guide of the Grand 
Pre people in both their spiritual and their temporal concerns. 

Regarding the French priests who ministered in King's County, 
a few words must be said. The first priest who resided at Grand 
Pre was Pere Claude Moireau, a Recollect, who made the earliest 
entry in the parish register, June 25, 1684. From 1694 to at least 
1697, M. de St. Cosme was there. In 1698 Bishop Valliers of Que- 
bec visited Minas, but there was no priest there, for it is recorded 
that finding the people entirely without religious ministration, the 
Bishop staid with them a day to hear confessions, give them the 
Holy Communion, and baptize their infant children. They were 
very anxious for a priest and promised if one were sent them to 
support him and build a church and a cure's house. In 1710 a priest 
was residing at Minas, for Governor Brouillan reports the Minas 
cure as having a salary of eight hundred livres. 

In 1705, no doubt to replace the sacred vessels and ornaments 
Col. Church and his soldiers the previous year had taken away, 
Bonaventure, Lieutenant du Roi, presented to the church at Minas 
as a royal gift, un ostensoir, un calice, un ciboire, et un orne- 
ment complet, for the furnishing of the altar and the celebration 
of the Eucharist. From 1707 to 1710, Bonaventure Masson, a Reeol- 
let, was priest at Minas ; from 1711 to 1717, Abbe Gaulin was there, 
after 1717, Fathers Felis Pain and Justinian Durand, perhaps to- 
gether, held the cure. In 1724 Father Felix Pain and Father Charle- 
magne of Annapolis Royal were charged with complicity with the 
Indians, and Father Felix was dismissed from the province. The 
latter 's successor, it is said, was Pere Isadore, but in 1739, and 
imtil 1748, Abbe de la Goudalie was the priest. At the time of the 
expulsion, Abbe Chavreulx was at Grand Pre, and Abbe Le Maire 
at Riviere aux Canards. 

Of the churches at these two places. Abbe Casgrain says : ' ' These 
temples surmounted by graceful spires, their wooden interiors 



38 KING'S COUNTY 

carved with taste, were all in oak, and had cost the people much 
sacrifice". "With more definiteness Lady "Weatherbe has, in sub- 
stance, written: "The church of St. Charles at Grand Pre, so 
far as we are aware, was constructed of wood, the style of the 
building being similar to that of the churches in Canada at the time. 
These were all built on the same plan ; the belfry tower, surmounted 
by its cross was mauresque in style, as is the case now with the 
old church of St. Anne de Beaupre, near Quebec, though that of the 
church of St. Charles was somewhat smaller. Twice daily sounded 
the Angelus, always responded to by the pious inhabitants. The 
interior also resembled the interiors of the churches of Canada. 
Usually, the choir had its architectural ornamentation, pillars, either 
Ionic or Corinthian, supporting the cornice, though sometimes the 
entablature continued into the nave. The cemetery adjoined the 
church, and was inclosed by a wooden railing or fence, and near 
by was the house of the resident cure". When Winslow turned the 
church at Grand Pre into an arsenal and psison, from the number 
of men he made it accommodate we see that it must have been 
large enough to hold five or six hundred worshippers. Before he 
devoted it to this secular use, to his credit be it said, the Puritan 
commander ordered the elders of the village to remove the sacred 
things. 

From time to time interesting relics of the Acadians have been 
unearthed at Grand Pre and elsewhere in the county. Before the 
French went away, it is said, some of them, perhaps hoping to 
return, buried in caches, or stoned-up places like wells, their farm- 
ing and household utensils. Some twenty years ago a cache was 
discovered on the farm of Mr. John A. Chipman, on Church Street, 
in which were plow-shares, pitch-forks, and other farming utensils, 
all of the best iron. At about the same time, or perhaps a few 
years earlier, some chains and plow-shares were unearthed on 
Enoch Collins' farm at Port Williams. In 1892 a French Louis 
D'Or, bearing the effigy of Louis XIV of France and Navarre, was 
turned up by the hoof of a cow that was being driven to pasture 
on the farm of a Mr. McGibbon, within the confines of the present 
Grand Pre. 



CHAPTER lY 
THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 

The history of the settlement of the Acadian French in King's 
County covers a period of exactly eighty-four years. In this time, 
in their two chief districts of Minas and River Canard, they built 
houses and churches and small forts, reclaimed from wildness 
many hundreds of acres of upland fields, the crops from which, as 
from the fertile marshes, they sent in small schooners, chiefly to 
Louisburg; traded also in some measure with the mother settle- 
ment at Port Royal and with the early established fishing port 
of Canso ; spun and wove wool for their clothing and flax for their 
household linen; and most laborious industry of all, inclosed from 
the sea several thousand acres of marsh land on the Grand Pre, 
and along the county's five rivers, the Grand Habitant, the Riviere 
aux Canards, the Petit Habitant, the Pereau, and the Gaspereau. 
Their district as we have said, was by far the most pros- 
perous in the whole of Acadia, and that this fact, together with their 
comparative isolation from the rest of the Acadians, should have 
engendered in them a strong feeling of independence, that made 
them almost republican in spirit, is not to be wondered at. ''The 
gentle and peaceful character of the Acadians", says Hannay, 
"has been much insisted on. The people within reach of the guns 
of Port Royal were tolerably obedient, but in the settlements where 
there was no military force to coerce them they exhibited very 
different traits". Governor Brouillan records that when he visited 
Minas in 1701 he found the people there extremely independent, 
not acknowledging royal or judicial authority, and very impatient 
of control from without. "The judgments of the judge at 
Port Royal", he says, "they entirely disregarded, and Bona- 
venture. Lieutenant du Roi, had to use considerable pressure 
to bring them to order. They expressed their fears to Brouillan 



40 KING'S COUNTY 

that the province was about to be put under the control of a 
Company, and declared that in that case they would do nothing 
for its defence, but would rather belong to the English. This 
testimony of a French governor as to the disposition of the people 
of Minas agrees precisely with that of Paul Mascarene, a French 
Huguenot in the British service in Nova Scotia, who wrote to the 
Lords of Trade in 1720; 'The inhabitants of this place * * * 
are less tractable and subject to command. All the orders sent 
to them, if not suiting to their humours, are scoffed and laughed 
at, and they put themselves on the footing of obeying no gov- 
ernment' ". 

At some time, though possibly late, in their occupancy of the 
country, the Acadians found a market for part of the produce of 
their farms with Joshua Mauger, the enterprising son of a London 
Jewish merchant, who long traded in Acadia, with Louisburg as 
a centre. Mauger, of whom we shall have occasion to speak more 
fully in a later chapter, established "truck houses" at Piziquid, 
Minas, and Grand Pre, as well as on the Eiver St. John, and 
while buying the Acadians' produce at their doors, and in his own 
vessels transporting it to Louisburg, he no doubt brought to their 
homes much of the varied merchandise he so persistently smug- 
gled from France. 

But the people's prosperity was not without interruption. In 
May, 1704, Governor Joseph Dudley of Massachusetts, disturbed by 
the almost continual strife between the English and French on the 
frontier settlements of New England, sent a naval force under 
command of the noted Ehode Island Indian warrior, Col. Benjamin 
Church, to punish the French and their allies, the Indians, on the 
eastern coast. This force comprised two war ships, the Jersey and 
the Gosport, together with the province galley; fourteen trans- 
ports, thirty-six whale-boats, and a scout shallop, and included in 
all, 550 men. Church had already made four voyages to Acadia, 
and through cruelties he had perpetrated at Beaubassin (Chignecto) 
in 1696, had earned for himself the deserved reputation of a harsh 
and unpitying man. On this expedition he fully sustained his repu- 



THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 41 

tation. After visiting Penobscot and Passamaquoddy, killing and 
making prisoners manj^ of the French, carrying away among others 
the daughter of Baron Castin and her family, he sailed to the Bay of 
Fundy. There his fleet divided, his men-of-war proceeding to Port 
Royal, but he and his soldiers going in the smaller vessels to Minas. 
Following in part Governor Dudley's instructions to burn and 
destroy the homes of the French, cut their dykes, injure their crops, 
and take what spoils he could, he made huge openings in several of 
the dykes, so that the destructive salt tides swept over the marshes, 
and then did whatever other damage he could to the Minas farm- 
ers' possessions. After this ruthless work, the fierce messenger 
of Dudley sailed down the Bay and joined the ships he had ordered 
to await him at Digby Gut. Before he returned to Boston, how- 
ever, he went again to Beaubassin, and there burned twenty houses, 
and killed a hundred-and-twenty horned cattle and a number of 
sheep. 

From this time we have frequent notices of the Minas settle- 
ment. In December, 1704, Bonaventure complains of the bad state 
of the fort, and says that there are only eight officers in the gar- 
rison, and they inexperienced and young. In the same year Gov- 
ernor Brouillan writes that he has exiled to Minas a certain Mad- 
ame Freneuse, about whom there had been no little scandal among 
the Port Royal settlers. In 1705 Bonaventure sends an inhabitant, 
with four soldiers, to Minas, to bring back the King's bark, La 
GalUarde, laden with wheat. The soldiers of this party got drunk 
and seriously misconducted themselves, and eventually compelled 
the sailors to take the King's bark to Boston, they evidently pre- 
ferring to give themselves up to the authorities there and endure 
whatever fate they might meet, rather than go back to Port Royal 
and face the wrath of the French governor. Shortly after this 
event, in the same year. Governor Brouillan died at sea, and Mon- 
sieur Subercase came from France in his stead. In 1709 the new 
governor enlisted with others seventy-five men at Minas, as an ad- 
ditional force, in case the English should again visit the province, 
as it seemed likely they would soon plan to do. 



M KING'S COUNTY 

In 1710 the final conquest of Acadia was effected, under Gen- 
eral Francis Nicholson, the holder, successively, of more governor- 
ships in British colonies than any man known to history. On the 
18th of September, with a fleet of six war ships, twenty-nine trans- 
ports, and the Massachusetts province galley, Nicholson sailed 
from Nantasket, and on the 16th of October, the French garrison, 
a hundred and fifty-six half starved men, came out of the fort, 
and Nicholson and his New England troops went in. On the 28th 
of October, having left a sufficient garrison in the place, the leader 
of this important expedition took his ships away. April 11, 1713, 
a treaty of peace was signed at Utrecht, by which the whole of 
Acadia was ceded to the British crown. Thirty-two years later, 
again through the energy of New England troops, the renowned 
fortress of Louisburg, which lay outside Acadia, was also captured 
for the English King. 

To the Acadians at Minas the sudden change of ownership 
caused by the surrender of Port Royal must have brought no little 
foreboding. The ill-feeling toward them of their New England 
neighbors they had already had much opportunity to test, and what 
fresh incursion the Puritans might now make into their prosperous 
domain it was impossible for them to know. When the treaty of 
Utrecht, however, at last settled the status of the Acadian popula- 
tion, what they had to expect from their conquerors remained no 
longer uncertain. The treaty provided that such of the inhabitants 
as were willing to stay in Acadia and be subject to Britain should 
remain in unhindered possession of their lands, and should enjoy 
the free exercise of their religion, "according to the usage of the 
Church of Rome, as far as the laws of Great Britain do allow the 
same", but that any who chose might within a year remove from 
the province with their effects, forfeiting, however, all their lands. 
That the Acadians did not take advantage of this last clause of the 
treaty and remove to Canada or to Cape Breton, is a matter that 
we shall speak of a little further on. 

In 1731, Lieutenant Governor Armstrong ordered Nigau Robi- 
chaux to buy black cattle and sheep at Minas and bring them to 



THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 43 

Annapolis. About the same time the lieutenant governor reported 
that he had been applied to for house and garden lots near An- 
napolis, for farm lots at Minas, and for grants at Ghippody, where 
some young people had recently settled. In 1732 he planned to 
erect a ''granary" at Minas for the accommodation of soldiers, 
but owing to the opposition of the Indians to such a project, and 
to the disapproval of his scheme by the Council, he soon relin- 
quished his plan. In his letter to the Duke of Newcastle in refer- 
ence to the matter, Armstrong says: "Under the disguise of a 
magazine I have ordered a house to be built at Menis, where I 
design to fix a company for the better government of those more 
remote parts in the Bay of Fundy, and as I hope, to perfect it, not- 
withstanding all the opposition I meet with from the rebellious 
spirits in these parts, incited to oppose it by Governor St. Ovide (of 
Quebec), cost what it will". 

In 1734 Ensign Samuel Cottnam, at Minas, wrote to the lieuten- 
ant governor complaining of clandestine trade there. It was re- 
solved in Council to authorize Cottnam to seize the traders who 
were smuggling, and their vessels, and bring them to Annapolis. 
To assist in the suppression of illegal trade, Mr. John Hamilton, 
Deputy Collector and Naval officer at Annapolis, a cousin of Major 
Otho Hamilton of the 40th Regiment, was employed to go up the 
Bay. In 1735 the Deputies at Minas were reproved for not obey- 
ing the governor's orders regarding the punishment of "petit 
Jacques Le Blanc", who had grossly insulted the deputy collector. 
In April of this year, an order was issued by the Council for re- 
pairing the road between Minas and Piziquid, and for mending 
dykes and fences at both places. The same month Lieutenant 
Governor Armstrong sailed to Minas and found the people there 
"very complaisant, and outwardly well affected", but in his judg- 
ment, not really loyal to the English crown. He was convinced 
that they had incited the Indians to mischief, but he thinks the 
erection of a blockhouse and the placing of troops there might 
keep their rebellious spirit in check. Armstrong was destined, 
however, never to carry out his wish to strengthen the fortress at 



44 KING'S COUNTY 

Minas, and it is possible that disappointment at not being allowed 
to do so may have increased the melancholy which in December, 
1739, led him to take his own life. A little over three years before 
his death he had signed a grant of fifty thousand acres, in what 
afterward became the County of King's (later the county of 
Hants), to some thirty-five gentlemen, among whom were all the 
chief military officials in Nova Scotia. It is interesting to note that 
in this grant, the land given is said to be in the "township of Har- 
rington, in the county of Southampton' \ names that have never 
been known in the later history of the province. May 27th of this 
year, Alexander Bourg was reappointed "notary and receiver of 
King's dues" at Grand Pre. 

In the spring of 1742, a certain Captain Trefry, master of a 
sloop engaged in trading at Grand Pre, was surprised, robbed, 
and otherwise ill-used, by some Indians, probably on his vessel at 
Horton Landing. The robbery caused great excitement at Minas, 
and the two Deputies, Messrs. Bourg and Mangeant, were active in 
recovering Trefry 's goods. In 1744 a Canadian named Joseph 
Vanier was arrested at Annapolis and detained, on complaints made 
against him at Minas. In connection with Vanier 's arrest, Lieuten- 
ant-Governor Mascarene wrote complainingly to the Minas Depu- 
ties: "The people from your place bring us so many affairs to set- 
tle, and they are in such a hurry to get home again, that we have no 
time to write suitable answers". This one complaint is a sufficient 
proof that however worthy the people of Minas in general may have 
been, like people of other nationalities and times, they were a great 
way from having reached a millennial condition of good-will and 
peace. 

In June, 1744, fresh disturbance arose between France and 
England, and on the first of July a party of Indians, directly in- 
spired in their action, it was believed, by the notorious priest, Le 
Loutre, fiercely attacked the Annapolis garrison. The timely ar- 
rival of a force from Massachusetts, however, defeated the attack, 
and caused the Indians to retreat to Minas, where in a short time 
they were joined by French troops from Louisburg. The siege 



THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 45 

of the Annapolis fort was then resumed, but without success, and 
the inhabitants of Minas, together with the people of Annapolis 
and Chignecto, hastened to assure the government of their loyalty, 
in spite of the fact that they had been entreated and menaced by 
the invading force. This year the notary, Bourg, was suspended 
for neglect of duty, and in his place one of the men whose name 
has been made familiar to us by Longfellow's poem, Rene Le Blanc, 
was appointed in his place. The next year Bourg and Joseph Le 
Blanc were taken to Annapolis and closely interrogated regarding 
their conduct during the recent invasion. In the end Bourg was 
entirely freed of suspicion of having willingly given the enemy 
aid. 

A matter of continual dissatisfaction to the government at 
Annapolis was that the inhabitants of Minas and Chignecto were 
accustomed to supply the garrison at Louisburg with cattle and farm 
produce. This, of course, was done in the way of legitimate trade, 
and in spite of orders to the contrary from the lieutenant-gov- 
ernor and his Council, must be felt to have been perfectly justifiable, 
since any agricultural people must somewhere find a market for 
what their fields and farm-yards yield them to sell. It is charged 
truly, against the Minas farmers, that after the first fall of Louis- 
burg for a time they refused to supply the new garrison there with 
food, but it is strongly probable that this refusal, so distinctly in 
opposition to their own financial interests, was chiefly due to the ter- 
rorism exercised over them by Le Loutre, the most persistent and 
troublesome foe England ever had in the Acadian peninsula. On 
the 17th of June, 1745, the first capture of Louisburg was effected 
by Sir William Pepperrell and the troops who with almost the 
zeal of ancient crusaders had enrolled themselves for the final de- 
struction of French power on New England's borders. The next 
year, France, grown desperate by the loss of her strongest fortress, 
sent a fleet across the seas to recapture not only Louisburg, but 
the whole of Acadia, as well. From Quebec, also, came a detach- 
ment of troops to cooperate with the fleet. To protect Nova Scotia 
from any attack the French might make, on appeal from Lieuten- 



46 KING'S COUNTY 

ant-Governor Masearene, Governor Shirley of Massachusetts sent 
five hundred volunteers to the province to assist the small number 
of troops already there. One of the officers at the capture of Louis- 
burg was Lieut.-Colonel Arthur Noble, who had made a fortune 
by farming and trading at the mouth of the Kennebec. To his 
command Shirley committed the volunteers, and in the late autumn 
of 1747, this force with its commander landed at Annapolis. From 
there, part of the five hundred marched directly by land, over the 
rude highway to Grand Pre, part, however, going in vessels up 
the Bay. At the ''French Cross", now Morden, in Aylesford, on 
account of severe storms they left the vessels; then, without paths 
or guides, with great hardship they travelled across the North 
Mountain, and through the Aylesford wilderness to Minas, where 
they joined their comrades. 

By this time it was too late in the season to erect a blockhouse, 
and in twenty-four private houses, which they were able to se- 
cure for their accommodation, they prepared to spend the winter. 
At Beaubassin, in Cumberland county, was then stationed, in com- 
mand of the French troops, a Canadian officer named Ramesay. 
Learning of the arrival of the New England troops at Minas, and 
being told that it was Noble's intention in the spring to march 
against him, this officer formed a plan immediately to surprise the 
American commander and attack his force. In January he car- 
ried out his plan, and the march to Minas, amid cold and snow, 
was made with such secrecy, and the attack, in the dead of night, 
was so unexpected, that Noble, roused from his bed and fighting 
in his shirt, with many of his officers and men was almost instantly 
killed. At the foot of a bank, beside the present road leading 
to the old well and the willows, a trench was hurriedly made, and 
all the dead, except Noble and his brother, were there interred. 
These two brave officers were buried on the right of the road, 
farther up the hill, on what a few years ago was the property of 
Mr. James Laird. On each side of the spot stands now a large 
apple tree, but no monument of any kind has ever been erected 
to mark the double grave. The result of this night attack was 



THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 47 

that the English were obliged to leave Minas for Annapolis, with^ 
however, the honours of war, within forty-eight hours, their sick 
and wounded being left, under protection of a French guard, at 
River Canard till they were well. The English loss was one hun- 
dred killed, fifteen wounded, and fifty captured; the French loss 
was seven killed and fifteen wounded. In all the history of Minas, 
tmtil the removal of the Acadians, no incident is so tragical as this 
night battle between the French and the English at the hamlet of 
Grand Pre. 

There is a tradition that at some date, not specified, while the 
French occupied the county, a company of British soldiers going 
from Halifax to Annapolis under command of a lieutenant, were 
met by a party of French and Indians at a place called ''Bloody 
Run" or "Moccasin Hollow", a few miles west of Kentville, and 
were cruelly slain. It is possible, says Dr. Brechin in his manu- 
script, that the little force of British troops thus killed may have 
been that under command of Col. Goreham and Major Erasmus 
J. Phillips, that on the 9th of February, 1752, left Minas to go 
by land to Annapolis. The trench where these British soldiers were 
buried was visible, it is claimed, not more than twenty years ago. 

In 1749 came the founding of Halifax, and in that year the 
blockhouse at Annapolis was taken down and removed to Minas. 
Thereafter, a small permanent force was kept at the latter place 
under Major Handfield, the troops being quartered, as they had 
previously been, in rented houses near the block house. How 
early earthworks for fortification had been thrown up at Grand 
Pre it is impossible to know, but it is likely that during much of the 
period covered in this chapter, some such fortifi«ation did exist; 
the name of the Minas fort, according to Murdoch, who no doubt 
found it in some French document, was Yieux Logis. Late in 
1749, a company of Micmac and Maliseet Indians attacked Vieux 
Logis, and somewhere near the fort made prisoners a young offi- 
cer, Lieut. John Hamilton, son of Major Otho Hamilton, and a 
certain number of soldiers of the garrison. The attack on the 
fort itself was unsuccessful, but the young officer and his men 



48 KING'S COUNTY 

the Indians took with them to Chigneeto, where they were kept 
until ransomed by the government. 

With the surrender to England in 1755 of the northern Aca- 
dian stronghold, the fort near the present boundary between Nova 
Scotia and New Brunswick known as Beausejour, the whole of 
Acadia at last came under British control, and the complete sub- 
jection of the French population of the province to English rule 
now seemed to the Governor and Council at Halifax a necessary 
thing. In an earlier part of this chapter we have referred to the 
clause in the treaty of Utrecht which allowed the Acadians, if they 
wished, to remove from the peninsula within a year. Until com- 
paratively recent times the controversy between those, who like 
Abbe Eaynal idealize the French inhabitants of Acadia, and those 
who like Parkman more or less strongly uphold the conduct of the 
English authorities in taking them away, has concerned itself chief- 
ly with the unwillingness of the Acadians to take an unqualified 
oath of allegiance to Britain. Recently, however, the interest of 
controversalists on the subject of the deportation of the Acadians 
has centred in the unwillingness of the British authorities to give 
the French inhabitants the benefit of the last clause of the treaty 
of Utrecht. The year after the treaty, the people were tendered 
an unqualified oath of allegiance, but they objected to taking it, 
since it demanded that in the event of war they should hold 
themselves ready to take up arms against their fellow countrymen. 
Reporting to the home government their refusal to take the oath, 
Major Caulfield, the lieutenant-governor, however, urged that in 
any ease, if possible, the people should be kept in the province, 
since their leaving would almost certainly expose the English set- 
tlers to attacks from the Indians, and would make it impossible for 
the garrison at Annapolis to get proper supplies of food. In April, 
1730, the Acadians of Minas, Cobequid, Piziquid, and Beaubassin, 
all the country bordering on Minas Basin, did, willingly subscribe 
the following oath: "Nous Promettons et Jurons sincerement en 
foi de Chretien que nous serons entierement Fidelle et Nous 
8oumettrons Yeritablement a Sa Majeste George Le Second, Roy 



THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 49 

de la Grande Brctagne, que Nous reconnoissons pour Le Soverain 
Seigneur de La Nouvelle Ecosse et L'Acadie. Ainsi Dieu nous 
sort en aide". To this oath there were five hundred and ninety- 
one signatures, the names of the people subscribing being: Aigre, 
Allan, Amiraul, Aucoin, Arsenau, Babin, Barriot, Bean, Bellemere, 
Bellivaux, Benoit, Bernard, Blanchard, Boudrot, Bourg, Bourgeois, 
Breau, Brossard, Bujean, Bujeauld, Caissy, Caudet, Celestin, 
Chaudet, Chene, Chiasson, Cloistre, Comeau, Cormier, Corporon,, 
D'Aigle, D 'Aigre, D'Aroits, Dounaron, Doucet, Dugas, Dupuis, 
Ely, Epee, Flanc, Fontaine, Foret, Galerme, Gantreaux, Garceau, 
Gaudet, Gautrot, Girouard, Giroir, Gouzier, Granger, Grivois, 
Guerin, Hache, Hamel, Hautbois, Hebert, Henry, Hortements, Hu- 
gon, Jareau, La Bove, La Croix, Lamirre, Lamon, Landry, La Pierre, 
La Vache, Lebert, Le Blanc, Leger, Le Jeune, Levron, Le Prince, 
Le Vieux, Martin, Mazerolle, Melanson, Michel, Mouton, Naquin, 
Noge, Nuiratte, Ollivier, Pas, Pitre, Poupar, Pourier, Prijeant (or 
Pryjeau), Quaicie, Eacois, Richard, Rivet, Robichaud, Roy, 
Sampson, Saulnier, Savoie, Sesmez, Sire, Terriot, Tibodo, Trahan, 
Trigeul, Turpin, Vincent. 

In the brilliant pages of his "Montcalm and Wolfe", Park- 
man gives strong reasons why the action of the authorities in de- 
porting the Acadians should not be condemned. In his "Missing 
Links of a Lost Chapter in American History", Edouard Richard, 
and in the Calnek-Savary ' ' History of Annapolis ' ', the learned Judge 
Savary, as energetically takes the part of the French. These writers 
both show that repeated attempts on the part of the inhabitants 
to take advantage of the declared willingness of the British crown 
to let them leave the province, on one plea or another were deter- 
minedly resisted, and lay the blame for what they regard as un- 
pardonable cruelty on the part of the British, chiefly on Colonel 
Lawrence, the Governor of Nova Scotia, and a Council of four men, 
three of whom, Benjamin Green, John Rous, and Jonathan Belcher, 
were Bostonians by birth. "It will be still quite new to 
many who read these pages", says Judge Savary, "that it was 
not by their own choice, but by that of the Government and its 



50 KING'S COUNTY 

representatives in Nova Scotia that they (the French) remained; 
and that they persistently sought to avail themselves of the priv- 
ilege of removal guaranteed to them by the treaty, and v^ere as 
persistently prevented. A few who had lived in the hanlieiie were 
permitted to sell out and depart, and some managed to make good 
their escape in the autumn of 1749, after Cornwallis' declaration. 
Governor Lawrence (the next governor but one to Cornwallis), 
even after his conception of the plan for their destruction, wrote 
thus: 'I believe that a ve.vy large part of the inhabitants would 
submit to any terms rathe j than take up arms on either side'. 
It is not, therefore, with any question of the expulsion of the 
Acadians that we have to deal, but with their annihilation as a race 
or nationality attempted, and with partial success, and untold 
misery and ruin to the victims, by Governor Lawrence". 

Without entering any further into a controversy so long now 
and with so much feeling pursued, we may properly say that the 
expulsion of the Acadians was part of a determined movement 
by England and New England to break forever the power of France 
in the new world. "The Acadians could be neutralized", says Dr. 
Edward Channing in his recent History of the United States, "by 
seizing and holding as hostages the leading men among them, or 
by settling an overwhelming number of English colonists in their 
country; they could be eliminated from the military problem by 
distributing them throughout the old English settlements to the 
southward. The last was likely to be the most efficacious solution 
of the difficulty, as well as the easier and cheaper from a military 
point of view". The Acadians, unfortunately for themselves, 
' ' lived in one of the most important strategic points on the Atlantic 
coast, holding the southern entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 
* * * had their homes been a hundred miles farther south or 
north, they might have lived placidly and died peacefully where 
they were born". 

In the summer of 1755, an unqualified oath of allegiance, in- 
volving willingness to bear arms for England, was again demanded 
of the Acadian people, but the Deputies from Grand Pre and the 



THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 51 

otlier Minas settlements, and from Annapolis, the two bodies repre- 
senting nine-tenths of the population within the peninsula, ap- 
peared before the Council, and on behalf of themselves and the rest 
of the inhabitants respectfully but firmly refused to take any 
other oath than that they had subscribed years before. During the 
progress of the Government's final attempt to exact from them an 
unconditional oath. Governor Lawrence wrote the Secretary of 
State: "I am determined to bring the inhabitants to compliance, 
or rid the Province of such perfidious subjects". "When the Depu- 
ties had finally left Halifax the Council at once began to make 
plans for the people's removal. There were perhaps eight thou- 
sand, in all, in the peninsula, and to carry so many away was a 
somewhat formidable task. From Governor Shirley at Boston, 
transports were obtained and the removal of the Minas people was 
given in charge to Lieut.-Colonel John Winslow, who was already 
at Fort Beausejour, then Fort Cumberland. Armed with Law- 
rence's proclamation for the removal, the 14th of August "Winslow 
sailed down Chignecto Channel to the Bay of Fundy, and when the 
tide set into Minas Basin held his course to the mouth of the Avon. 
Where Windsor now stands was a stockade, known as Fort Edward, 
and there with a small garrison Captain Alexander Murray held 
command. The two officers quickly conferred, and by the end of 
the month, at Windsor and Grand Pre, had fully matured their 
plans. On the fifth of September four hundred and eighteen men, 
representing the chief settlements of Minas, in obedience to Wins- 
low's summons assembled in the Grand Pre church. "The per- 
emptory orders of his Majesty", said the New England officer, 
addressing them, "are, that all the French inhabitants of these 
districts be removed; and through his Majesty's goodness I am 
directed to allow you the liberty of carrying with you your money 
and as many of your household goods as you can take without 
overloading the vessels you go in. I shall do everything in my 
power that all these goods be secured to you, and that you be not 
molested in carrying them away, and also that whole families shall 
go in the same vessel; so that this removal, which I am sensible 



52 KING'S COUNTY 

must give you a great deal of trouble, may be made as easy as his 
Majesty's service will admit; and I hope that in whatever part of 
the world your lot may fall, you may be faithful subjects, and a 
peaceable and happy people. I must also inform you that it is his 
Majesty's pleasure that you remain in security under the inspection 
and direction of the troops that I have the honour to command". 
The men were then declared prisoners of the King. 

"Horton Landing" is an anchorage on a bold shore, where the 
Gaspereau river joins the estuary of the Avon and the Basin of 
Minas. It is a spot protected on the west and north by Boot Island, 
and is some three or four hundred yards north of the present rail- 
way, and some two miles from deep water, at low tide. At this 
landing the vessels of Winslow were drawn up, and September ninth 
two hundred and thirty young men were marched from the church, 
a mile and a half, to the landing and placed on board three sloops, 
at high tide. When they were on board, the vessels dropped out 
to deep water and anchored. September seventeenth, in the same 
way, further shipments were made. October eighth, the embarka- 
tion of families began. "Began to embark the inhabitants", writes 
"Winslow in his Journal, "who went off very solentarily and un- 
willingly, the women in great distress, carrying off their children 
in their arms; others carrying their decrepit parents in their carts, 
with all their goods; moving in great confusion, and appeared a 
scene of woe and distress". 

"All day long between the shore and the ships did the boats ply; 
All day long the wains came laboring down from the village. 
Late in the afternoon, when the sun was near to his setting, 
Echoing far o'er the fields came the roll of drums from the church-yard. 
Thither the women and children thronged. 

On a sudden the church-doors 
Opened, and forth came the guard, and marching in gloomy procession 
Followed the long-imprisoned, but patient, Acadian farmers." 

On this day eighty families were put on board the ships. From 
October twenty-third to twenty-seventh, on the Cornwallis side of 
the Grand Habitant river, five sloops were loaded at Boudreau's 
Bank (Town Plot) with the inhabitants of the various settlements 



THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 5^ 

in Cornwallis, the people who lived in the scattered hamlets along 
the Canard, Petit Habitant, and Pereau rivers. Haliburton tells us 
in pathetic detail that near the spot where these Cornwallis Acadians 
embarked, the New England people who five years later were given 
their lands, found sixty ox-carts and as many yokes (tradition 
adds, chains, and remnants of household goods), which the French 
had used in conveying their goods to the vessels that had borne 
them away, and that at the skirts of the forest they saw many 
bleached skeletons of sheep and horned cattle, that the winter 
after their owners left had died of starvation and cold. In a 
short time, he adds, they encountered a few straggling Acadian 
families who had escaped deportation, who afraid of sharing 
their countrymen's fate had not ventured to till the soil, or even 
appear in the open country, since their friends were removed. 

By the beginning of November, 1,510 persons had gone, in nine 
vessels, and the commander writes that he has more than six hun- 
dred still to send. On account of the scarcity of vessels not all 
were removed till the twentieth of December, but soon after the 
removal began, Winslow went to Halifax, leaving Captain Osgood 
to guard those that remained. Before he left, however, he ordered 
the houses and barns on the Cornwallis side of the Grand Habitant, 
and at Gaspereau, to be burned, and in December a similar de- 
struction was made of the houses and barns in and near the vil- 
lage of Grand Pre. The first week of November two hundred and 
six houses and two hundred and thirty-seven barns were burned 
at Canard, Habitant, and Pereau^ and forty-nine houses, and thirty- 
nine barns at Gaspereau. Besides these, there were burned at 
various places, eleven mills. In the burning of Grand Pre, the 
Church of St. Charles with its furnishings, like the other buildings, 
was destroyed. Besides the 1,510 persons shipped at Minas by 
"Winslow, 732 were reported to have been shipped later by Osgood. 
The whole number of people in the peninsula at the time of the 
deportation, as we have said, was probably about 8,000, and from the 
four centres, Minas, Fort Edward, Beaubassin, and Annapolis, a 
little over 6,000, in all, Parkman estimates, were taken away. 



54 KING'S COUNTY 

From the district of Grand Pre, as at the other centres, a certain 
number escaped deportation by hiding in the woods. Tradition says 
that when the New England planters came in 1760, they found here, 
as in Cornwallis, some wretched people who had hardly dared ven- 
ture out of the forest since their friends were removed, and who in 
all the miserable five years of their fugitive life had never once 
tasted bread. In 1762, a considerable number of these fugitives 
were employed by the new inhabitants of Cornwallis and Horton in 
the work they had undertaken of rebuilding the partly destroyed 
dykes. In July of that year, by order of the government a hun- 
dred and thirty of them in King's and Annapolis (King's, of 
course, then including Hants) were brought to Halifax under escort 
of a hundred of the King's County militia. A little later, the 
lieutenant-governor representing the French neutral prisoners as 
' ' insolent and dangerous ' ', and as inciting the Indians near Halifax 
against the English, advised that they should be transported to 
Boston. Very soon they were sent to Boston, but the Boston au- 
thorities refused to receive them and they were returned to Halifax 
without being allowed to land. In 1764, there were at Fort Ed- 
wards, seventy-seven families of Acadians, comprising 227 souls. ' 

Of the deported Acadians the subsequent history is more melan- 
choly, far, to read than any description of the expulsion that has 
ever found its way into print. In pitiful groups, varying greatly 
in size, they were set down on the American seaboard, from Maine 
to Georgia, their poverty and their distress of mind being usually 
as great as they well could be. Precisely how sorrowful their 
plight was may be learned from documents in the archives of many 
of the states of the American Union where they were unwelcomely 
received, or were refused to be allowed to land. Hutchinson says 
that some families were brought to Boston, mothers and children 
only, without their husbands and fathers, the men having been 
shipped to Philadelphia, and learning of their families' where- 
abouts only through advertisements in the newspapers. Miss 
Caulkins in her history of New London, Connecticut, states that 
more of the neutrals were brought to New London than to any 



THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 55 

other port: "The selectmen were desired to find accommodations 
for them at some distance from the town, and to see that they were 
kept at some suitable employment. A vessel with three hundred on 
board came into New London harbour, Jan. 21, 1756. Another 
vessel, thronged with these unhappy exiles, that had sailed from 
Halifax early in the year, and being blown off the coast took shel- 
ter in Antigua, came from thence under convoy of a man-of-war, 
and arrived in port. May 22nd. Many in this last vessel were sick 
and dying of small-pox. A special Assembly convened by the 
governor, Jan. 21, 1756, to dispose of these foreigners, distributed 
the four hundred then on hand among all the towns in the col- 
ony, according to their list. The regular proportion of New Lon- 
don was but twelve, yet many others afterward gathered here. 
Some of the neutrals were subsequently returned to their former 
homes. In 1767, Captain Kiehard Leffingwell sailed from New 
London with two hundred and forty, to be reeonveyed to their 
country ' '. 

The great interest in Nova Scotia that the proclamation of 
1758 offering the French lands to New England settlers, aroused 
in eastern Connecticut, was no doubt largely owing to the knowledge 
the Connecticut people had of Nova Scotia through the tragedy of 
the expulsion of the "neutrals", as the exiles were commonly 
called. 

In the State Archives of Massachusetts are two large volumes 
of manuscript documents, comprising orders of the Council concern- 
ing the neutrals, charges from the Selectmen of a large number of 
towns for their support, petitions from the people themselves, for 
help, and for removal to places where they might be better able 
to support themselves and their families, and facts of other sorts 
that must arouse in the mind of any one who reads them a 
deeper sympathy than he has ever felt before for the woes of the 
exiled French, and a deeper feeling of indignation at the politi- 
cal measures that were responsible for their unhappy fate. Of 
documents to be found in New England which throw light on their 
pitiful condition, two examples only can be given here. At Point 



56 KING'S COUNTY 

Shirley had been placed Frangois Leblane, very likely one of 
the Minas inhabitants. In the summer of 1756 this man wrote the 
Government of Massachusetts as follows: 

''To his Excellency the Governor, the Honorable, the Council 
and Representatives of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay ; Fran- 
gois Le Blanc, a poor French inhabitant of Accaday humbly shows 
that he and his family, five of which are men, were placed at 
Point Shirley, that they have with great difficulty supported them- 
selves since the provision allowed by the Province ceased, but now 
they cannot find work and they have a winter before them and 
no prospect of any opportunity of labour during that season and 
all necessaries of life are excessive dear there and your Petitioner's 
family must perish with hunger and cold. Your Petitioner has 
relations placed in the Town of York and is known to Col. Don- 
nell and Capt. Dounell and has traded with them, and he thinks 
he could support his family tho' he is 63 years old, with the help 
of his sons and some little relief from the Public and as there 
is but eight French in that town he hopes there will be no excep- 
tion and humbly prays he may be placed there with his family". 

This petition was read in Council, Aug. 20, 1756, and referred 
to James Minot, Esq., and certain members of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, as a committee, to be considered and acted on. 

From Falmouth, now Portland, Maine, in 1763, among many 
such petitions for relief from distress, came a similarly sad plea 
from an Acadian whose name had been anglicized to ''John White". 

' ' To his Excellency Francis Bernard, Esq., Gov. of the Province 
of the Massachusetts Bay : 

"To the Honorable, his Majesty's Council and House of Rep- 
resentatives in General Court Assembled : 
February 23rd, 1763 : 

"The petition of John White, one of the inhabitants of Minas 
in Nova Scotia; living in Falmouth in Casco Bay (now Portland) 
in behalf of himself and others, living in said Town. Humbly 
Sheweth that we being brought from our Native Country, where- 
by we are deprived of our Houses and lands and Stripped in a 



THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 57 

Great measure of our whole Substance, and now live among 
strangers grappling with misery and want, and the Town of Fal- 
mouth have rated us in their Public taxes which adds greatly to 
our Distresses, — 

** Wherefore we humbly intreat your Excellency and Honours 
So Far to Compassionate our Miserable Circumstances as to Ex- 
cuse us from paying to public Taxes, until we shall get into some 
way of Business to maintain ourselves and families, or otherwise 
relieve us as in your great Wisdom you shall think just and reason- 
able". 

In the House of Representatives, Feb. 25th, 1765, this let- 
ter was read, and it was ordered "that the assessors of the said 
Town of Falmouth be directed to abate all the Poll Taxes here- 
tofore imposed upon all the French Neutrals (so called) living in 
said Town". 

The chief family names at Minas at the time of the expulsion 
were: Alin, Apigne, Aucoine, Babin, Belfontaine, Belmere, Benois, 
Blanchard, Bondro, Bouer, Bouns, Bourg, Brane, Brasseux, Brassin, 
Braux, Brun, Bugeant, Capierre, Caretter, Celestin, Celue, Cleland, 
Clemenson, Cloarte, Commeau, Cotoe, Daigre, David, Diron, Doucet, 
Doulet, Dour, Duis, Duon, Dupiers, Dupuy, Dusour, Duzoy, Forest, 
Gotro, Granger, Herbert, Inferno, Labous, Landry, Lapierre, Le 
Bar, Le Blanc, Leblin, Le Prince, Lesour, Leuron, Massier, Melan- 
son, Mengean, Menier, Michel, Noails, Pitree, Quette, Richard, 
Robichaud, Rour, Sapin, Semer, Somier, Sorere, Sosonier, Terriot, 
Tibodo, Tilhard, Trahan, Trahause, Timour, Vinson. 



CHAPTER y 

THE COMING OF NEW ENGLAND 
PLANTERS TO CORNWALLIS AND HORTON 

The first significant attempt at English settlement in Nova 
Scotia was made by the Lords of Trade and Plantations in 1749. 
In June of that year, 2,476 persons from England, under command 
of the Hon. Edward Cornwallis, who had been commissioned Cap- 
tain General of the expedition, and Governor of Nova Scotia, in 
thirteen transports accompanied by the Beaufort, a sloop of war, 
sailed into Chebucto Bay. Abolishing the Military Council which 
had long existed at Annapolis Koyal, on board the Beaufort in 
the harbour, Cornwallis organized a civil government, and with this 
important event the settled history of Nova Scotia begins. The 
new town established by Cornwallis, in compliment to George 
Montague, Earl of Halifax, then head of the Lords of Trade, was 
named Halifax, and henceforth the chief authority in the province 
was located there. In the wake of the English settlers whom the 
new governor brought out, the next year came some 1,500 or more 
German and French Protestants, who for the most part finally 
located in what soon became the County of Lunenburg. 

The removal of the Acadians from the province, as we have 
seen, was accomplished in 1755, and before the end of December 
of that year, what is now King's County was almost entirely with- 
out inhabitants. In 1753 the old fort, Vieux Logis, at Minas, erected 
in the first year of Cornwallis' government, had been abandoned, 
and its garrison sent to Fort Edward at Piziquid, which had suffi- 
cient accommodation for both garrisons. After the French gen- 
erally were removed, a small force for protection was still retained 
at Fort Edward, and the Acadians of the vicinity who had es- 



COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 59 

caped deportation and could be found, were kept there as prison- 
ers. How many of these there were it is impossible to say, but 
from the official returns it appears that the average number from 
June 13, 1763, to March 18, 1764, was 343. In the former year, 
however, there were nearly 400 there. After the expulsion, there- 
fore, save for the garrison at Piziquid, the few French these soldiers 
guarded, and the little companies of Micmacs in the solitary woods, 
in what are now the counties of Hants and King's there could not 
have been a single human inhabitant. 

In 1758 the final capture of Louisburg was affected, and the 
next year Quebec fell, and with the complete destruction of French 
power on the continent the possibility of having a loyal British 
population in Nova Scotia at last came strongly into view. It 
is said that the scheme of settling the province that was now 
matured by the Lords of Trade was suggested to that body by tlje 
authorities of Massachusetts, and the statement is doubtless true. 
That Governor Lawrence at Halifax, Cornwallis' successor, who 
had played a vigorous part in the expulsion of the French, warmly 
seconded the plan, is also certainly true, and since several of the 
Councillors, his advisers, were themselves New England men, the 
Council was naturally loud in its praise. 

In the autumn of 1758, therefore, under instructions from Eng- 
land, the Council adopted a proclamation relative to settling the 
vacant lands. The proclamation stated that by the destruction of 
French power in Cape Breton and Nova Scotia, the enemy who 
had formerly disturbed and harassed the province and obstructed 
its progress had been obliged to retire to Canada, and that thus 
a favorable opportunity was presented for "peopling and cultivat- 
ing as well the lands vacated by the French as every other part of 
this valuable province". The lands are described as consisting 
of ''upwards of one hundred thousand acres of interval and plow 
lands, producing wheat, rye, barley, oats, hemp, flax, etc." ''These 
have been cultivated for more than a hundred years past, and 
never fail of crops, nor need manuring. Also, more than one hun- 
dred thousand acres of upland, cleared, and stocked with English 



60 KING'S COUNTY 

grass, planted with orchards, gardens, etc. These lands with good 
husbandry produce often two loads of hay per acre. The wild and 
unimproved lands adjoining to the above are well timbered and 
wooded with beech, black birch, ash, oak, pine, fir, etc. All these 
lands are so intermixed that every single farmer may have a propor- 
tionate quantity of plow land, grass land, and wood land; and all 
are situated about the Bay of Fundi, upon rivers navigable for 
ships of burthen". Proposals for settlement, it was stated, would 
be received by Mr, Thomas Hancock of Boston (uncle of John 
Hancock), and Messrs. De Lancey and Watts of New York, and 
would be transmitted to the Governor of Nova Scotia, or in his ab- 
sence to the Lieutenant Governor, or the President of the Council. 

The next step was to have the proclamation made known, and 
accordingly, on the 12th of October, 1758, the Council caused it to 
be published in the Boston Gazette. As soon as the proclamation 
appeared, the agent in Boston was plied with questions as to what 
terms of encouragement would be offered settlers, how much land 
each person would receive, what quit-rent and taxes were to be 
exacted, what constitution of government prevailed in the province, 
and what freedom in religion new settlers would have. The result 
of these questions was that at a meeting of the Council, held Thurs- 
day, January eleventh, 1759, a second proclamation was approved in 
which the Governor states that he is empowered to make grants of 
the best land in the province. That a hundred acres of wild wood- 
land would be given each head of a family, and fifty acres additional 
for each person in his family, young or old, male or female, black 
or white, subject to a quit-rent of one shilling per fifty acres, the 
rent to begin, however, not until ten years after the issuing of the 
grant. The grantees must cultivate or inclose one third of the 
land in ten years, one third more in twenty years, and the re- 
mainder in thirty years. No quantity above a thousand acres, 
however, would be granted to any one person. On fulfilment of 
the terms of a first grant the party receiving it should be entitled 
to another on similar conditions. 

The lands on the Bay of Fundy were to be distributed "with 



COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 61 

proportions of interval plow land, mowing land, and pasture", which 
lands for more than a hundred years had produced abundant crops 
of wheat, rye, barley, oats, hemp, and flax, without ever needing 
to be manured. The government of Nova Scotia was constituted 
like that of the neighboring colonies, the legislature consisting of 
a Governor, a Council and an Assembly. As soon as the people were 
settled, townships of a hundred thousand acres each, or about 
twelve miles square, would be formed, and each township would 
be entitled to send two representatives to the Assembly. The courts 
of justice were constituted like those of Massachusetts, Connecticut, 
and other northern colonies; and as to religion, both by his 
Majesty's instructions and by a late act of the Assembly, full lib- 
erty of conscience was secured to persons of all persuasions. Papists 
excepted. Settlers were to be amply protected in their new homes, 
for forts garrisoned with royal troops had already been established 
in close proximity to the lands proposed to be settled. 

It is a little singular that the interest which these proclama- 
tions aroused in New England, and the important migration which 
accordingly soon followed, should have left so little trace in printed 
records of the colonies from which the settlers went. Miss Caulkins ' 
history of New London, however, says: "The clearing of Nova 
Scotia of the French opened the way for the introduction of English 
colonists. Between this period (1760) and the Revolution, the 
tide of immigration set thitherward from New England, and par- 
ticularly from Connecticut. Menis, Amherst, Dublin, and other 
towns in the province, received a large proportion of their first 
planters from New London county". The same author's history of 
Norwich says of 1760: ''Nova Scotia was then open to immigrants, 
and speculation was busy with its lands. Farms and townships 
were thrown into the market, and adventurers were eager to take 
possession of the vacated seats of the exiled Acadians. The provin- 
cial government caused these lands to be distributed into towns 
and sections, and lots were offered to actual settlers on easy terms. 
The inhabitants of the eastern part of Connecticut, and several citi- 
zens of Norwich, in particular, entered largely into these purchases, 



62 KING'S COUNTY 

as tliey did also into the purchase made at the same period, of 
land on the Delaware River. The proprietors held their meetings 
at the town-house, in Norwich, and many persons of even small 
means were induced to become subscribers, in the expectation of 
bettering their fortunes. The townships of Dublin, Horton, 
Falmouth, Cornwallis, and Amherst were settled in part by Con- 
necticut emigrants. Sloops were sent from Norwich and New Lon- 
don with provisions and passengers. One of these in a single trip 
conveyed 137 settlers from New London county. The second Capt. 
Robert Denison (Miss Caulkin's ancestor) was among the emi- 
grants". Macy's History of Nantucket also has a slight notice of 
the migration: ''It would seem by the preceding account of the 
whale fisheries", it says, ''that the (Nantucket) people were in- 
dustrious and doing well and that business was in a flourishing 
state. No one would suppose that under the circumstances any of 
the inhabitants could feel an inclination to emigrate with their 
families to other places; yet some, believing that they would im- 
prove their condition, removed to Nova Scotia, some to Kennebeck, 
some to New Garden, in the state of South Carolina, etc ' '. 

The interest in Nova Scotia aroused by the Council's proclam- 
ations, and by the knowledge New England people had in other 
ways gained of the vacant lands there, was indeed widespread and 
great. In certain parts of Massachusetts this interest centred 
more strongly in the southern part of Nova Scotia, the Atlantic 
seaboard towns, to which soon a multitude of Massachusetts set- 
tlers removed. In eastern Connecticut and Rhode Island interest 
was strongest in the Minas district, the townships of Horton and 
Cornwallis, and the lands that lay farther east, on both sides of 
the Avon river. So great was this interest that in April, 1759, a 
large number of for the most part well-to-do persons in Connecti- 
cut and Rhode Island, who had partly determined to settle near 
Minas Basin, sent five agents to the province to inspect this part of 
the Acadian country and report. These agents were. Major Robert 
Denison, Messrs. Jonathan Harris, Joseph Otis, and Amos Fuller 
of Connecticut, and Mr. John Hicks of Rhode Island, worthy 



COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 63 

gentlemen and puominent persons in the several towns where they 
belonged. Coming to Halifax, the agents by invitation of Governor 
Lawrence attended a meeting of the Council, at which, besides the 
Governor, Messrs. Jonathan Belcher, Benjamin Green, John Col- 
lier, and Charles Morris were present. The conditions under which 
settlement of the Minas lands would be made were carefully dis- 
cussed, and the conference proved satisfactory to the agents. From 
the Council these gentlemen received assurance that the vessels be- 
longing to the province would be put at the service of the people 
they represented, to bring them, with their stock and furniture, to 
Nova Scotia; that arms for a small number would be furnished; 
that the settlers would not be subject to impressment; and that 
since the people in whose behalf they came were the first appli- 
cants for land, the poorer ones among them should receive govern- 
ment aid. 

That the agents might satisfy themselves thoroughly regarding 
the Minas lands, the Council soon sent them in an armed vessel, with 
an officer of artillery and eight soldiers, to visit the places along 
the Bay of Fundy proposed for settlement. Mr. Morris, who was 
not only a member of the Council, but was also chief land-surveyor 
for the province, himself from New England, accompanied the party 
to give information, and if necessary to lay out townships. Around 
the southern coast of Nova Scotia the party sailed, and no doubt 
first calling at Annapolis Royal, proceeded up the Bay of Fundy to 
Grand Pre and Piziquid, at each of which places they disembarked 
and spent some time. It was now late in April or early in May, 
the orchards were in their earliest budding, the dykes were begin- 
ning to grow green, the rich uplands were waiting for the plow, 
and here and there was still standing some lonely barn, or perhaps 
house, that had escaped burning at the sad time when its owner 
was taken away. 

"With their tour of inspection the agents were so well pleased 
that when they again reached Halifax the four Connecticut men, 
who represented three hundred and thirty of their fellow country- 
men, at once entered into an agreement with the Council to set- 



64 KING'S COUNTY 

tie a township at Minas, "joining on the river Gaspereau, and in- 
cluding the great marshes, so called, "which township was to 
consist of a hundred thousand acres, to be settled by two hundred 
families, the grants to be in fee simple, subject to the proposed 
quit-rent. For the people's defense, block houses were to be built 
and garrisoned and arms and ammunition given, and fifty families 
of the number were to have from government an allowance of 
corn of one bushel a month for each person, or a full equivalent in 
other grain. The settlers, with their moveables and stock, were 
also to be transported from New England at the government's 
expense. 

Another township, Canard, consisting also of a hundred thou- 
sand acres, on the north side of the Grand Habitant, was to be set- 
tled by a hundred and fifty families. Two of the agents, Mr. Amos 
Puller of Connecticut, and the Rhode Island agent, Mr. John Hicks, 
requested the governor to reserve lands for them and their consti- 
tuents for a third township, on the north side of the Avon river, 
they promising to settle there fifty families in 1759, and fifty more 
in 1760, on the same terms as had been stipulated in the cases of 
Minas and Canard. At this meeting, which took place May 21, 
1759, grants of the two townships of Horton and Cornwallis (these 
names being probably determined on at the meeting) were ordered 
to pass the great seal of the province, and in June the draft of 
a grant of the township of Granville, on the north side of the Aji- 
napolis river, was also approved. A temporary check, however, 
Tvas now given to the formation of new settlements, by the fact 
that a party of French and Indians had fired on the members of 
a committee which were inspecting the lands near Cape Sable, that 
another hostile band had appeared before the fort at Piziquid, that 
five persons had been murdered on the east side of Halifax har- 
bour, and that the enemy had frequently appeared in the environs 
of Lunenburg and Fort Sackville, 

On the nineteenth of July, a fresh committee of foui; 
Connecticut men, Messrs. Bliss Willoughby, Benjamin Kimball, 
Edward Mott, and Samuel Starr, appeared before the Council at 



COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 65 

Halifax and stated that they desired to settle a township at Chig- 
necto. To their desire, also, the Council quickly acceded, and a 
vessel was allowed them so that they might go to the Cumberland 
shore. On the 24th of July, on behalf of fifty-two other applicants 
it was resolved to erect a township a Cobequid, to be called Onslow, 
and also to grant land in Annapolis to a company of New Eng- 
landers, numbering a hundred and twelve. 

Until January, 1757, the Governor and Council ruled alone in 
Nova Scotia, at that time, after long debate, it was decided that a 
Representative Assembly should be created, and that there should 
"be elected for the province at large, until counties should be formed, 
twelve members, besides four for the township of Halifax, two for 
the township of Lunenburg and one each for the townships of 
Dartmouth, Lawrencetown (both in Halifax County), Annapolis 
Royal, and Cumberland. The bounds of these townships were 
described, and it was resolved that when twenty-five qualified 
electors should be settled at Piziquid, Minas, Cobequid, or any other 
district that might in the future be erected into a township, any 
one of these places should be entitled to send one representative 
to the Assembly and should likewise have the right to vote in the 
election of representatives for the province at large. Members and 
voters must not be "Popish recusants", nor be under the age of 
twenty-one years, and each must have a freehold estate in the 
district he represented or voted for. The first Assembly met in 
Halifax on Monday, October 2, 1758, when nineteen members — six 
"esquires", and thirteen "gentlemen", were sworn in. At a meet- 
ing of the Council in August, 1759, soon after the dissolution of the 
second session of the first Assembly, the Council fixed the repre- 
sentation of the township of Halifax at four members, and of 
Lunenburg, Annapolis, Horton, and Cumberland, at two each. For 
the newly formed counties of Halifax, Lunenburg, Annapolis, 
King's, and Cumberland, there were to be two each. 

The first grants of land to intending settlers in Horton and 
Cornwallis were completed and ordered to pass the seal of the 
province, the 21st of May, 1759. In each township, there were a 



66 KING'S COUNTY 

hundred thousand acres, in Horton the land to be distributed among 
200 families, in Cornwallis among 150 families. After most 
of the New England people had come to the province, on ac- 
count of many deficiencies in the grants the government 
advised the committees appointed to act for the grantees to sur- 
render them, and accordingly on the 29th of May, 1761, a new 
grant of the township of Horton, and on the 21st of July, a grant 
of Cornwallis, was made. The township of Falmouth, ** between 
the river Pisiquid and the town of Horton", was also created and 
a grant of 50,000 acres was given there, the 21st of July, 1759. 
Falmouth lay on both sides of the river Piziquid and the two divi- 
sions of it were called respectively. East and West Falmouth. Late 
in 1761, perhaps, the division known as East Falmouth was made 
a separate township, and in honour of Lord Newport, a friend of 
Hon. Jonathan Belcher (who was at this time lieutenant-governor) 
was named Newport, when the earlier name "West Falmouth dis- 
appeared. The township of "Windsor was created in 1764. "Writers 
on the establishment of the early New England colonies say that of 
the two names, town and totvnship, given to the territories within 
the limits of grants or purchases, or to considerable settlements, 
the name township soon ceased to be as common a designation as 
town. In Nova Scotia, however, the name township remained in 
common use until the merging of the original townships in muni- 
cipalities, in 1879. 

The chief reason for the return of the first large grants in 
Cornwallis and Horton and the issuing of new ones was probably 
that many of the persons to whom the first grants were given, when 
they actually faced the prospect of removal from their old homes 
in Connecticut gave up the idea of coming and announced their 
relinquishment of their grants. On the other hand, many new 
men caught the enthusiasm for removal to Nova Scotia, where 
lands were given away so freely, and announced their intention 
of coming in the others' stead. Accordingly, the committees for 
distributing the lands, the Cornwallis committee, consisting of 
Messrs. Eliakim Tupper, Stephen West, and Jonathan Newcomb, 



COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 67 

were advised, as we have said, to return the old grants, and request 
new ones bearing more nearly the names of actual settlers in the 

county. 

Full information concerning the sailing from Massachusetts, 
Connecticut, and Rhode Island, of the Nova Scotia planters, it 
has never been possible to obtain. As early as May 11, 1760, 
Governor Lawrence reports that forty families have already ar- 
rived to settle in the direction of Annapolis, Minas, and Piziquid, 
and that transports are expected soon from Connecticut bearing 
others still. In May of the same year, the sloop Sally, Jonathan 
Lovett, master, brought from Newport, Rhode Island, to Falmouth, 
thirty-five persons, and the sloop Lydia, Samuel Toby, master, 
twenty-three more. Haliburton's pages record the tradition that 
a large number of settlers for Cornwallis sailed together in a fleet 
of twenty-two vessels, convoyed by a brig of war, mounting sixteen 
guns, commanded by Captain Pigot, and that the vessels reached 
Town Plot on the fourth of June, 1760. The first of June there 
came to Piziquid from New London, a certain Captain Rogers with 
six transports, bringing inhabitants principally for the township 
of Horton. The people who came in these ships had been at sea 
twenty-one days and had had great lack of provender and hay for 
their stock. At New London, when they left, many others who had 
hoped to sail with them had been left behind for want of accom- 
modation. From Piziquid, these planters drove their stock over 
land to Minas. Of one of the vessels that brought settlers to Corn- 
wallis, we know the name; Elizabeth Seaborn Wolfe "Woodworth, 
daughter of Silas and Sarah (English) Woodworth, had been born 
on the passage from New London, May 21, 1760 on the ship Wolfe. 
Of the birth of another child on the passage from New London, 
we have also authentic record; this was Betty, daughter of Capt. 
Peter and Rhoda (Schofield) Wiekwire, who was born "in the 
harbour of Horton" on Sunday, June 7, 1760. 

The chief places of disembarkation for the settlers in Corn- 
wallis and Horton respectively, were Town Plot on the Cornwallis 
side of the Grand Habitant river, and Horton Landing on the 



68 KING'S COUNTY 

Horton side. At Town Plot the bold bank gave a natural quay 
for the small vessels in early days in use on these shores, and 
Horton Landing had been the chief place of anchorage for ves- 
sels coming to Grand Pre through the whole French period in 
Acadia. As soon as there were organized township governments 
in the county a public ferry was established at Town Plot in 
Cornwallis, to a point almost exactly opposite, on the Horton side. 
From there a road was made over marsh and dyked land to what 
is now the village of Wolfville. This ferry and the road to Wolf- 
ville were in use until 1834, when the bridge at Terry's Creek, now 
Port "Williams, was constructed. For the first few weeks or months 
after they came, the settlers must have lived chiefly in tents, for 
even the smallest houses could not be constructed in a day. The 
materials for probably a considerable number of the first houses 
were brought from New England ready to be put together. 
This was the case with Elkanah Morton's house, and it was true 
also of the ferry house, which was one of the first buildings erected, 
and which stood at Cornwallis Town Plot until 1905. 

An interesting side-light is thrown on the settlement of the 
New England people in Falmouth by an account which has been 
handed down in the Haliburton family of the coming to that town 
of William and Susannah (Otis) Haliburton, and of their life near 
Fort Edward during the first months after they came. Landing 
at Halifax, probably from Boston, the young husband on horseback 
and his wife on a pillion behind him made the long journey to 
Newport over the rough forest road, and for eighteen months after 
they reached Falmouth, with their two Negro servants from the 
household of Mrs. Haliburton 's father, Ephraim Otis of Scituate, 
lived in tents. At last, however, they built a good two-story frame 
house, the foundations and posts of which were logs, the outside 
being clapboarded. They had brought with them ''eighteen months' 
provisions, tents, furniture, spinning wheels, a loom, and farming 
implements", to serve them on their plantation; but after en- 
during the hardships and trials of farm life as long as they could, 
the couple gave farming up and moved into the village of Windsor, 



COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 69 

where Mr. Ilaliburton entered on the more congenial study of law. 

Of the agents who came to Nova Scotia before the migration, 
on behalf of the intending planters, Col. Robert Denison, born in 
New London in 1697, was a captain in General Roger Wolcott's 
brigade at Louisburg in 1758 and soon won reputation for gallant 
behaviour in that notable siege. He settled in Horton, and as we 
shall hereafter see, founded an important family in that town. 
Jonathan Harris, born in New London, June 15, 1705, whose father- 
in-law was Hon. Judge Joseph Otis of Scituate, Mass., was also 
a man of much prominence in eastern Connecticut. He did not 
himself settle in King's County, but his brother Lebbeus and his 
son James did. Judge Joseph Otis, though he had been a judge 
of the Court of Common Pleas for Plymouth County, Mass., and 
a representative in Massachusetts to the General Court, was a large 
land-owner in New London, Colchester, Pomfret, and other Con- 
necticut towns. He also remained in New England. Benjamin 
Kimball was probably a son of Joseph Kimball of Preston, Conn., 
and if so was born April 15, 1722. Whether Nova Scotia did not 
please him or not we do not know, but in 1768 he bought land in 
Plainfield, New Hampshire and settled there. Bliss Willoughby 
was a son of Joseph Willoughby of New London and his wife, 
Thankful (Bliss), and a brother of Dr. Samuel Willoughby who 
became a grantee in Cornwallis. He too went back to New Eng- 
land and remained. Samuel Starr, born in Norwich, Conn., Sept. 
2, 1728, was a son of Samuel and Anne (Bushnell) Starr, and a 
great-great-great-grandson of Dr. Comfort Starr, who came to 
America from the town of Ashford in Kent. He became one of the 
most important King's County planters and founded in Cornwallis 
a family whose influence from first to last has been very great. 

Of the planters themselves who came to Cornwallis and Horton, 
by far the larger number were members of representative families 
in the eastern counties of Connecticut. A few were from Massa- 
chusetts and Rhode Island, but the original homes of most were 
those beautiful old towns comprised within the boundaries of the 
four Connecticut counties. New London and Windham, Middlesex 



70 KING'S COUNTY 

and Tolland, — the towns of New London, Lebanon, Colchester, 
Lyme, Norwich, Killingworth, Hebron, Saybrook, Stonington, Tol- 
land, Windham, and Windsor, the last, however, lying a little farther 
west in the county of Hartford. If any one will take the trouble 
to examine the admirable histories of New London and Norwich, 
from both of which we have already quoted in this chapter, or the 
now rapidly increasing later town and family histories of eastern 
Connecticut, he will see how important the families were from 
whom are descended the people who have inhabited and still largely 
inhabit the county whose annals this volume is written to preserve. 
In the North Parish of New London, now called Montville, 
in the noted old town of Lebanon, in Norwich, the beautiful "rose 
of New England", the most influential families in the 18th century 
were families, branches of which the later genealogical sketches in 
this book will be found to enshrine. From Lebanon a larger num- 
ber migrated than from any other town. Of this interesting locality, 
the author of the Strong Genealogy says with pardonable enthusi- 
asm: "Lebanon, Connecticut, has had a remarkable history. No 
town in the whole country has compared with it in the number 
of leading professional men it has furnished to the nation. Thtf 
first settlers, who went there from 1695 onwards were of superior 
stock, the very best intellectual and religious material for 'a new 
plantation' that Northampton, Norwich, etc., could furnish. An- 
other fact is that the land of Lebanon was and is of a very superior 
quality, but most of all must be taken into account the grand school 
privileges of Lebanon in its early history. In 1700, the town ap- 
propriated two hundred acres of land for a school, and many of 
the proprietors gave of their own lands also for the same purpose, 
Eev. Joseph Parsons giving five acres of his land. In 1740, a gram- 
mar school was established by a vote of the town and it became a 
school of great celebrity, having pupils from nine of the thirteen 
colonies which afterward became the first states of the union, and 
sending large numbers of them in successive years to Harvard and 
Yale. Here Nathan Tisdale, 'Master Tisdale', as he has always been 
called, did a great work for his generation. He was born in Leban- 



COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 71 

on, Sept. 19, 1732, graduated at Harvard in 1749, at the age of 
seventeen, and had charge of the grammar school from that time 
till his death in 1786. Such men as Jeremiah Mason, Zephaniah 
Swift, Col. John Trumbull, Governor John Trumbull, Rev. Dr. 
Lyman, Judge Baldwin, and a host of others, were his pupils". 

In a certain ''Rate List" in Lebanon for levying the minister's 
salary drawn up in 1741, we find the familiar names, not only of 
''Deacon John Newcomb" and "Deacon Eliakim Tupper", but of 
Robert Avery, Moses Dewey, John English, Amos and Noah Fuller, 
Eddy Newcomb, John and Samuel Porter, and Benjamin Wood- 
worth. Besides these we find persons of the names of Bill, Brewster, 
Harris, Hutchinson, Lee, Parker, Pineo, and Post. From the North 
Parish of New London, a very large number of the grantees, but 
precisely how many we do not know, also came. Adjoining the 
Connecticut counties we have mentioned, on the east lie the coun- 
ties of Washington and Newport in Rhode Island, and on the west 
the counties of Bristol and Plymouth in Massachusetts, and through 
all these southern New England counties enthusiastic interest in 
the proclamation concerning Nova Scotia seems to have spread. 
Accordingly, we have among our planters, men whose homes had 
been in Newport, Tiverton, South Kingston, Plymouth, Swansea, 
Nantucket, and other well known Rhode Island and Massachusetts 
towns. 

In the following lists of grantees will be found the names of 
the chief persons who founded the more prominent families in the 
two earliest settled townships of the county, the townships of Corn- 
wallis and Horton, but to discover with certainty the exact locality 
from which every one of them directly came would require more 
research into New England local and family history than at present 
we can possibly make. It is safe to say, however, that of the whole 
list of King's County's earliest English planters, nine tenths, at 
least, were directly from conspicuous eastern Connecticut towns. 
Many of the families that settled in Horton and Cornwallis had 
intermarried in Connecticut, and to untangle the relationships that 
existed among them when they came to the county would be 



72 KING'S COUNTY 

a difficult, though very interesting task. So interrelated were the 
Horton families, for example, in Connecticut, that in tracing their 
history we feel as if we were tracing the relationships not of many 
families to each other, but of one great family among its various 
branches. In the latter part of this volume brief genealogical 
sketches of many of these related families will be found, but it 
would take a lifetime of research to compile anything like com- 
plete genealogies of the families of all the grantees. Such work 
must be left to the individual genealogists of the families them- 
selves. The whole New England migration to Nova Scotia in 
1760- '61, bringing hither, as we have said, people from many other 
than eastern Connecticut and Ehode Island towns, and numbering 
in all some six or seven thousand souls, has been ably treated in 
newspaper print by Dr. Benjamin Rand, who, it is hoped, will 
sometime publish the results of his investigation in more permanent 
form. 

HORTON GRANTEES 

First effective grant of 65,750 acres, given May 29, 1761, registered 
June 13, 1761. Committee of and for the grantees : William Welch, 
Lebbeus Harris, Samuel Reid. Each full share consisted of 500 
acres. r 

Names are spelled here as in the original grants : 

Shares Shares 



Atwell John 


1 


Breynton Rev. John 


2 


Avery Robert 


11/2 


Brown Darius 


1 


Bacon Jacob 


1 


Brown Elisha 


1/2 


Bacon Jacob, Jr. 


1/2 


Browning Else 


1 


Beckwith Benjamin, Jr. 


V2 


Burnham Jacob 


1 


Bennett Caleb 


11/2 


Carr William 


1/2 


Bennett Zadok 


1 


Chappell Jonathan 


1 


Benjamin Obadiah 


1 


Clark Moses 


1 


Bishop John 


1 


Clark Samuel 


1 


Bishop John, Jr. 


1 


Coats Bulah 


1/2 


Bishop Peter 


1 *4*-Colwell John 


1/2 


Bishop Timothy 


1/2 


Comstock Jeremiah 


1 


Bishop William 


1/2 


Comstock Rufus 


1 


Blackman Jonathan 


1 


Conniver Samuel 


1/2 



COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 7S 



Cooley William 


1 


Larrabee Thomas 


1 


Copp Samuel 


V2 


Lockert James 


1 


Crane Silas 


11/0 


Lockert John 


1/2 


Crane Silas, Jr. 


1/2 


Lothrop Elisha, Esq. 


11/2 


Davis John 


11/2. 


Lothrop Elijah 


V2 


Davison Andrew 


11/0 


Lothrop Isaac 


V2 


Denison Col Robert 


IV2 


Lothrop Thaddeus 


V2 


Denison Samuel 


¥2 


Lyon Amariah 


1 


Dickson Major Charles 


W2 


Markham James 


V2 


Dickson Thomas 


1 


Martin Brotherton 


11/2 


Dickson AVilliam 


1 


Mather Joseph 


IVa 


Dodge Daniel 


1 


Miner Christopher 


Va 


Emmerson Stephen 


1 


Miner Darius 


1 


Forsyth Gilbert 


11/2 


Miner Martha 


1/2. 


Fuller Amos 


IV2 


Miner Sylvanus 


11/2 


Fuller Nathan 


11/2 


Miner Thomas 


% 


Fuller Nathan, Jr. 


1/2 


Mitchell Michael 


1/2 


Fuller Noah 


iy2 


Morris Charles, Jr. 


1 


Godfrey David 


1 


Murray Patrick 


1/2 


Graves Ephraim 


V2 


Nichols Elisha 


1/2 


Graves Jonathan 


1 


Palmeter Elnathan 


11/2 


Griffin Samuel 


1 


Peabody Parker 


1/2 


Hackett Joseph 


1 


Peck Benjamin, Jr. 


1/2 


Hackett Joseph, Jr. 


V2 


Prentice James 


1/2 


Hackley Marshall 


1 


Prentice Oliver 


1/2 


Haekley Peter 


1/2 


Randall Anna 


1 


Hamilton John 


1/2 


Randall Charles 


1 


Hamilton Jonathan 


11/0 


Randall John 


1/2 


Harding Abraham 


11/2 


Ransom Stephen 


1 


Harding Israel 


1 


Rathbon Amos 


1 


Harding Lemuel 


1 


Reid James 


1/2 


Harding Thomas 


1/2 


Reid Mary 


1/2 


Harris Asa 


. 11/2 


Reid Samuel 


11/2 


Harris Daniel 


V2 


Reid Samuel, Jr. 


V2 


Harris Ephraim 


11/2 


Reid William 


1/2 


Harris Ephraim, Jr. 


1/2 


Rich Cornelius 


11/2 


Harris Gilbert 


1 


Rogers Rowland 


1 


Harris Lebbeus 


11/2 


Scovel Arthur 


1/2 


Harris Lebbeus, Jr. 


1/2 


Sears Richard 


1/2 


Hatch Patience 


1 


Southworth William 


V2 


Higgins Sylvanus 


1 


Spencer Thomas 


1 


Huntley Jabesh 


1 


Stark Obadiah 


IV2 


Johnson Thomas 


1 


Stocking George, Jr. 


IV2 


Jordan Jedediah 


1 


Strickland Christopher 


1 


Kenney Nathan 


1 


Strickland Samuel 


11/2 


Laggat Thomas 


1 


Stuart Joshua 


V2 



74 



KING'S COUNTY 



Sutherland Theophilus 


1 


Taggart John 


1 


Townsend Ezra 


V2 


Tubbs Lebbeus 


1 


Tubbs Samuel 


1 


Turner John 


1 


"Webb James 


1 


Welch James 


V2 


Welch Joshua 


iy2 


Welch Joshua, Jr. 


1/2 



Welch William, Esq. 
Whipple Daniel 
Whitney John 
Whitney John, Jr. 
Wickwire James 
Wickwire Zebadiah 
Williams Jedediah 
Winter (Witter) Samuel 
Woodworth Benjamin 



iy2 

1/2 
1 

1/2 
1 
1 
1 
1 
1 



For a glebe 600 acres, for a school 400 acres. The whole num- 
ber of shares to be granted in Horton was 131V2- Distribution of 
shares that remained after the above grants were given, will be 
mentioned farther on. 



CORNWALLIS GRANTEES 

First effective grant, given July 21, 1761, committee of and for the 
grantees: Eliakim Tupper, Stephen West, Jonathan Newcomb. 
Each full share consisted of 666 ^/^ acres. 



Shares 



Shares 



Akley Lawrence 


1 


Huntington Ezekiel 


1 


Anderson Perez 


1/2 


Johnson James 


1/2 


Bartlett John 


1 


Johnson Lawrence 


(heirs 


Beckwith John 


1 


of) 


1 


Beck with John, Jr. 


1/2 


Kilbourn Benjamin 


1 


Bentley David 


1 


Kinsman Benjamin 


1 


Best William 


11/2 


Lummis Ephraim 


1 


Bill Amos, Esq. 


11/2 


Morris Francis 


1 


Bill Ebenezer 


11/2 


Morris Hezekiah 


1 


Bill Edward 


1 


Morton Elkanah 


11/2 


Boardman Ichabod 


1 


Newcomb Benjamin 


1 


Brewster Samuel 


1 


Newcomb Eddy 


11/2 


Burbidge John 


11/2 


Newcomb John, Jr. 


11/2 


Canada William 


1 


Newcomb William 


1 


Caulkin Ezekiel 


1 


Parish Solomon ^ 


1/2 


Chappell Jabish, Jr. 


1/2 


Parker David 


1 


Chappell Mary 


1/2 


Parker Elisha 


1/2 


Cogswell Hezekiah 


11/2 


Parker Robert 


1 


Dean John 


1 


Porter Elisha 


1 


Downer Ezra 


1/2 


Porter John 


1 


English Abigail 


1 


Porter Samuel 


11/2 



COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 75 



Pratt Ethan 


1 


"Webster Abraham 


1 


Rockwell Jonathan 


1 


West Stephen 


IV2 


Rogers Jeremiah 


1 


West William 


11/2 


Starr Samuel 


11/2 


Wheaton Caleb 


1 


Steadman John 


IV2 


Wickwire Peter 


iy2 


Stiles Nathan 


1 


Willoughby Samuel 


11/2 


Strong Stephen 


IVs 


Wood Jonathan 


V2 


Terry John 


1 


Woodworth Amasa 


1 


Thorpe Oliver 


1/2 


Woodworth Benjamin 


1 


Tupper Eliakim (heirs 


of) 11/2 


Woodworth Silas 


11/2 


Tupper Elias 


1 


Woodworth Thomas 


1 


Tupper William 


1 


Woodworth William 


1 



For a glebe 600 acres ; for a school 400 acres. 



CORNWALLIS GRANTEES 



Second grant of 38,917 acres, given December 31, 1764. 

Shares Shares 



Barnaby Stephen 


1 


Fox James 


1 


Barnaby Timothy 


11/2 


Gillett Caleb 


1 


Beckwith Samuel 


11/2 


Gore Moses 


iy2 


Bigelow Isaac 


11/2 


Hammond Archelaus 


1^/2 


Bigelow Isaac, Jr. 


1 


Hatch Nathaniel (heirs > 


of) 1 


Blackmore Branch 


1 


Herrington Stephen, Jr. 


1 


Bliss Nathaniel 


1 


Huntington, Caleb, Jr. 


1 


Borden John 


1 


Huntley Daniel 


1 


Borden Samuel 


1 


Loomer Stephen 


1 


Burbidge Elias 


1 


Lord Barnabas Tuthill 


1 


Burgess Seth 


1 


Lowden John 


1^2 


Chase Jethro 


1 


Morton Elkanah 


1 


Chase Joseph 


1 


Newcomb Benjamin 


1 


Chase Stephen, Jr. 


1 


Newcomb Simeon 


1 


Clerk Asa 


1 


Parrish Joel * 


1 


Coats Hannah 


1 


Pineo Peter 


1 


Cocks John 


IV2 


Porter Simeon 


1 


Cone Reuben 


1 


Post Stephen 


1 


Congdon Benjamin 


1 


Proctor William 


1 


Congdon James 


1 


Rand Caleb 


1 


Congdon Joseph 


1 


Rand John 


1 


Curtis Nathaniel 


' 1 


Rand Jonathan 


1 


Dewey Moses 


1 


Rand Thomas 


1 


Eales Joshua 


1 


Ratchford Thomas 


1 


Eaton David 


1 


Rogers Stephen 


1 



76 KING'S COUNTY 



Rust Jehiel 


1 


Tupper Eliakim 


1 


Sheffield Amos 


1 


"Wells Judah 


1 


Starr David 


1 


West Jabez 


1 


Stark Zephaniah 


1 


"Wickwire Peter, Jr. 


1 


Strong Stephen 


1 


"Wood John 


1 


Sweet John 


1 


Woodruff Jonathan 


1 



The full text of the first effective grant in Cornwallis is as 
follows : 

"To all to whom these presents shall come, Greeting: Whereas Eliakim 
Tupper, Stephen West and Jonathan Newcomb, a committee of the township of 
Cornwallis within King's County in this province, in behalf of themselves and 
other proprietors in the said Township, apprehending and being advised that 
the grant for the said Township heretofore made to them and their associates 
would for many deficiencies be insufficient to secure to them their property 
therein, and therefore have in behalf of themselves and their associates surren- 
dered the said grant and have requested me that a new grant of the said premises 
might be made out for the move fully assuring to them and their associates their 
right and shares therein, Now Know ye that I, Jonathan Belcher, Esquire, Presi- 
dent of his Majesty's Council and Commander in chief of his Majesty's Province 
of Nova Scotia for the time being, by virtue of the power and authority to me 
given by his present Majesty King George the third under the Great Seal of Great 
Britain have erected, and do by these presents by and with the advice and coun- 
sel of his Majesty's Council for the said province erect into a township a tract of 
land situate, lying, and being within the Basin of Minas, being the district com- 
monly called Canard and is abutted and bounded beginning at the River Habi- 
tant and running south sixty degrees west, measuring eight hundred and twenty 
chains; thence north thirty degrees west to the Bay of Fundy, measuring eight 
hundred chains; thence on the said Bay according to the course of the Bay of 
Fundy to Cape Fondu; thence on the entrance of the Basin of Minas and by the 
said basin to the river Habitant, and the River Habitant on the south part to the 
boundaries first mentioned according to the plan annexed containing in the 
whole one hundred thousand acres more or less according to a plan and survey of 
the same to be herewith registered ; which township is now called and hereafter to 
be known by the name of the Township of Cornwallis in the said province. 

"And also that I, by virtue of the power and authority in and by with the 
advice and consent aforesaid have given granted and confirmed and do by these 
presents give, grant and confirm unto the several persons hereinafter named, 
sixty-nine and five-eighths shares or rights, whereof the said township 
is to consist, with all and with all manner of mines unopened, excepting 
mines of gold and silver, precious stones and lapis lazuli, in and upon 
the said tract of land or township situate as aforesaid, viz., to the heirs of Eliakim 
Tupper, to Stephen West, John Newcomb, Jr., Peter Wickwire, Edde Newcomb, 
Samuel Starr, Ebenezer Bill, Amos Bill, Esq., Hezekiah Cogshall (Cogswell), 
Samuel Porter, William West, John Steadman, Elkanah Morton, Silas Wood- 



COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 77 

worth, and Dr. Samuel Willowby, one share and one half each; unto Stephen 
Strong one share and one eighth; unto Nathan Stiles, Ethan Pratt, John Beckwith 
Ephraim Lummis, John Bartlett, William Woodworth, Abraham Webster» 
Edward Bill, John Porter, Elisha Porter, Samuel Brewster, Jonathan Rockwell, 
Caleb Wheiton, Hezekiah Morris, Francis Morris, John Dean, Benjamin New- 
comb, Elias Tupper, Jonathan Morecomb, and the heirs of Lawrence Johnson, 
Ichabod Boardman, Benjamin Kilbourne, Thomas Woodworth, William Tupper 
Ezekiel Caulkin, Benjamin Kinsman, Abigail English, Ezekiel Huntington 
David Bentley, William Canada, Robert Parker, David Parker, Amasa Wood- 
worth, Lawrence Akley, Jeremiah Rogers, William Newcomb, Benjamin Wood- 
worth, and John Terry, one share each, and unto Jonathan Wood, Peres Anderson 
Solomon Parish, Ezra Downer, Mary Chappel, Elisha Parker, John Beckwith, Jr., 
Oliver Thorpe, James Johnson, and Jabish Chappel, Jr., one half share each; 
unto William Best, and John Burbidge item one share and a half to each; to the 
first minister one share ; for the glebe land six hundred acres, and for the school 
four hundred acres, making together two shares for the use of the church and a 
school forever, saving always the previous right of any other person or persons 
to the said tract of land or township or any part thereof, to Have and to Hold 
the said granted premises in the said respective shares to each and every or the 
said Grantees in the manner hereinbefore described, with all privileges, profits, 
commodities and appurtenances thereunto belonging unto the said [names of 
grantees given above], each share and right of said granted premises to consist 
•of six hundred and sixty-six acres and two thirds of an acre, and to be hereafter 
divided, one or more lots to each share as shall be agreed upon by the major part 
of the said grantees, and in case the major part of the said grantees shall un- 
reasonably refuse to divide the said granted premises, the Governor, Lieutenant 
Governor, or Commander-in-chief for the time being, shall direct a partition to 
be made by such person or persons as he shall appoint, and such partition shall 
be binding on each and every of the said grantees; provided always that to each 
share and right there shall be allotted a full and equal proportion as one share 
or right is to one hundred and fifty shares or rights of all the cleared or improved 
lands comprehended within the said Township; yielding and paying by the said 
grantees, their heirs and assigns, which by the acceptation hereof each of the 
said grantees binds and obliges himself, his heirs, executors, and assigns, to pay 
to his Majesty King George the third, His heirs and successors, or to the Com- 
mander-in-chief of the said Province for the time being or to any person law- 
fully authorized to receive the same, for His Majesty's use a free yearly quit rent 
■of one shilling sterling money on Michaelmas day for every fifty acres so granted 
and so in proportion for a greater or lesser quantity of land granted, the first 
year's payment of the same to be made on Michaelmas day next after the expira- 
tion of ten years from the date hereof and so to continue payable yearly here- 
after forever. But in case three years quit rent shall at any time be behind and 
unpaid and no distress to be found on the premises, then this grant to the grantee 
so failing shall be null and void. 

"And whereas the selling or alienating the shares or rights of the said town- 
-ship to any persons except Protestant settlers and inhabitants within this prov- 



78 KING'S COUNTY 

ince may be very prejudicial to and retard the settling of the said township, in 
case any of the said grantees shall within ten years from the date hereof alienate 
or grant the premises or any part thereof except by will, without license from 
the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, or Commander-in-chief for the time being 
under the seal of the said Province, for which license no fee or reward shall be 
paid, then this grant to him so alienating or granting the premises or any part 
thereof except by will shall be null and void. And moreover the grant hereby 
made is upon express condition and each of the said grantees obliges and binds 
himself his heirs and assigns, to plant, cultivate, improve or enclose one third 
part of the land hereby granted, within ten years; one other third part within 
thirty years from the date of this grant, or otherwise to forfeit his right to such 
land as shall not actually be under improvement and cultivation at the time 
forfeiture shall be incurred. And each of the said grantees does likewise hereby 
bind himself his heirs and assigns, to plant within ten years from the date hereof 
two acres of the said land with hemp, and to keep up the same or a like quantity 
of acres planted during the successive years. In witness whereof I have signed 
these presents and caused the seal of the Province to be thereunto affixed at 
Halifax in the said province this twenty-first day of July in the first year of the 
reign of our sovereign Lord George the third, by the Grace of God of Great Brit- 
ain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, and so forth, and in the 
year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and sixty one. 

"By order of the Commander in-chief with the advice and consent of his 
Majesty's Council. 

(Sd) Richard Bulkeley." 



The distribution of lands to the New England planters was 
made in a thoroughly systematic and careful way. In the first dis- 
tribution of lands in Norwich, Connecticut, the home before they 
came to Nova Scotia of some of the most important of these plant- 
ers, "the home-lots comprised each a block of several acres, and 
were in general river lands, favorable for mowing, pasture, and 
tillage. Each homestead had a tract of pasture land included in it, 
or laid out as near to it as was convenient. Near the centre of the 
Town Plot an open space was left for public buildings and military 
parades. This was soon known as the 'Green' or 'Plain*. Here 
stood the first meeting-house, toward the south side, with the open 
Common around it, and a steep pitch to the river". In the King's 
County, Nova Scotia, townships, a somewhat similar distribution 
of lands was made. In each township lot layers were appointed, 
in Cornwallis, Samuel Starr being one, and the lots were all num- 



COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 79 

bered and drawn for individually. Each full share, as we have seen, 
comprised 666 Y;^ acres, and the various sorts of land were appor- 
tioned in the following way. In Cornwallis a Town Plot, containing 
781/2 acres, was laid off, and each grantee of a full share was given a 
half acre lot in this reservation. In the centre of the Town Plot a 
square of four lots, or two acres, was left unoccupied, and roads 
through the rest, sixty-six feet wide, were cut at right angles. 
For the settlers generally a hundred and fifty lots were available, 
one lot besides these being set apart for a school, one as glebe land, 
and one for the first settled minister of the town, whatever his denom- 
ination might be. Secondly, a hundred and fifty-three ten acre 
lots were established, these comprising all the land between the 
Cornwallis or Grand Habitant river and the river Canard, from 
Starr's Point to the Lockwood farm at Port Williams, and the 
Old Masters' farm on Church Street. Thirdly, a hundred and 
fifty-three farm lots were laid out, these covering almost all the 
lands that had been cleared by the French. Fourthly, the estimated 
three thousand acres of dyked marsh was similarly divided. Later, 
wood lots of several hundred acres each were surveyed on the north 
and west and were apportioned to the settlers, each man therefore 
receiving as far as possible an equitable division of the cultivable 
or otherwise valuable lands. Besides the lands apportioned to 
individual settlers, three Parades were set apart, one at Town Plot^ 
one at Chipman's Corner, and one at Canard, where the Baptist 
Church stands. 

In Horton a town was laid out, fronting on what is now Horton 
Landing, and covering a hundred and forty-nine and a half acres,, 
exclusive of the Parade Ground. The plan, which may be seen 
in the Crown Land OfSce in Halifax, shows the town to have been 
of rectangular form, divided by streets at right angles, making^ 
squares of ten acres each, with the three Parade Grounds equi- 
distant from each other. Almost every lot measured two hundred 
and fifty feet, and had the intention of its projectors been carried 
out, says one writer, "a very pretty town would have arisen there. 
From various causes, however, the town grew only in a limited 



m KING'S COUNTY 

way, and now some of the ten acre sections are in the hands of 
private persons". As in Cornwallis, the land was divided into three 
•sections, and the holders of town lots also held land in these three 
divisions. The lots were compared, the Elderkin lot in Wolfville 
Ijeing valued at two hundred and eighty pounds and taken as a 
^standard. When other lots, according to this standard lacked in 
quality, they were added to in quantity, thus an extra piece of dyke 
would often be thrown in to atone for the comparative poverty of 
a piece of upland. In illustration of this plan of equalization we 
have the following document, dated October 18, 1790: "At a meet- 
ing of the present committee for making exchange of lands, and 
making of compensation for roads, we do mutually agree to ex- 
change a certain road with James Miner and Sylvanus Miner, to 
say that they are to have the dyke road that runs south and adjoins 
their dyke lands, beginning at the east end of their lands opposite 
to Josiah Bennett's farm, and to extend to Discharge dyke, in con- 
sequence of which we are to have, for the proprietors of Grand Pre, 
a road to extend to the cross road to the north side of said Dis- 
charge creek to said Discharge dyke. 

(Signed) 

Lebbeus Harris 
John Bishop 
Jonathan Crane. ' ' 

Of the exact method of distributing the Cornwallis lands we 
Tiave an interesting account by a native of the county, Mr, Robie 
L. Eeid. "Soon after the people came", says Mr. Reid, "surveyors 
were appointed to measure the ground, and lot layers to 'qualify' 
the land, that is, to see that all the lots contained an equitable 
quantity — quality and size being considered together. If the land 
was poor, more was given for a certain number of acres than if the 
quality was first rate — medium worth being considered standard. 
The first work of the surveyors was to lay out the Town Plot in half- 
acre lots, one of which was given to each man, irrespective of the 
number of shares he held. The other divisions were given in the 



COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 81 

proportion that the number of shares one held bore to the number of 
shares in the township. The dyke lands were laid off and qualified 
at the rate of six acres to each share. A quantity of marsh and 
broken dyke (as the land was called that lay inside of certain 
French dykes which were out of repair), and a lot on the Grand 
Dyke, were also given to each share. The best upland was then 
divided, part into ten acre lots, and part into fifty-four acre lots. 
These were called the 'first division farm lots', and one of each was 
given to each share. These lots being laid out by order of the Pro- 
prietors' meeting, to prevent disputes were drawn by lot, or 
'draughted', as the old records say. 

* * The remainder of the land was afterward divided as follows : 
First, the two hundred acre division was apportioned by the town 
officers to each share, this was called the 'second division of farm 
lots'. Afterward, a three hundred acre division was apportioned 
in like manner, and called the 'third division of farm lots'. These 
last two divisions were not actually laid off on the ground by the 
town officers as the first division of farm lots had been, but a man 
having a proprietor's right in either of these divisions took the 
township surveyor and two lot layers and laid out his land wherever 
he could find any unappropriated land. This in the language of 
the times was called 'pitching it'. The term 'pitch' was applied 
to the right to the land, the manner of locating it, and also the land 
itself, so that a man who purchased land from one of the old pro- 
prietors was not said to buy a right to lay out land, but was said 
to buy a 'pitch'. What may seem strange to the people of this day, 
after the laying out of the forty-four acre divisions, the lands on 
the North Mountain in Cornwallis were accounted of most value, 
and were first laid out. This was because they were mistakenly 
considered better than the valley lands for raising wheat. 

"We have also the peculiarity in the laying out of the North 
Mountain lands, that the base line which runs through the centre 
of the North Mountain table land, and over which runs what is 
now known as the 'Base line road', is straight, while in some cases, 
■at least, the side-lines are that torment of surveyors the conch- 



82 KING'S COUNTY ■ 

shell line. In rmining the latter, the points for division were made 
on the base-line, and at corresponding points on the Bay, and at 
the front of the mountain, and then the line was 'blazed' through 
the forest by following from point to point the sound of a conch- 
shell, used as a horn. This, however, was not done in all cases, as 
some of the lines are well run. The last 'pitch' was taken on the 
John Arnold Hammond grant by the Hon. Samuel Chipman, who 
pitched land on Cape Blomidon in December, 1873. The chief 
surveyor in the county for many years, and a good one he was, 
was William Tupper. The last surveyor appointed, was Edward 
Armstrong of Church Street. The last of the King's County lot 
layers was Bayard Borden of Belcher Street". 

In not a few instances grantees entered into possession of their 
land as much as three years before formally receiving their grants. 
David Eaton, for example, was in Cornwallis before August 15, 
1761, but his grant was not issued by the Council until December 
31, 1764. It is clear, therefore, that the committees for the distri- 
bution of lands had authority to induct settlers into their lands be- 
fore the Council had a chance, or cared, to act on their applications. 

Of lands set off for public use besides the church and school 
lands, and Parades, were, of course, burial grounds. For burial 
places, in Cornwallis at least, the planters seem as much as possible 
to have chosen the French cemeteries. The first burial place at 
Town Plot, where the Starrs and a few other families buried, and 
the Congregationalist-Presbyterian churchyard at Chipman 's Cor- 
ner, were both originally French churchyards. "With regard to 
burial places, it may be said that the early New England custom of 
burying in lonely places on farms does not seem anywhere 
in Nova Scotia to have prevailed. The share of land in 
Cornwallis set apart for the first minister was obtained, as we 
shall hereafter see, by the Rev. Benaiah Phelps. With his retire- 
ment from the pastorate of the Congregationalist church, this land, 
which he sold for his own benefit, became forever alienated from 
the use of the town. 

For the esipense of surveying his land, and obtaining his grant 



COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 83 

or deed, as also for the amount of his quit-rent to the government, 
each grantee, of course, was responsible. In the 100,000 acres in 
Cornwallis designed for a hundred and fifty families, only a hun- 
dred and twenty-eight families at first shared. Some of the extra 
lots were given to Halifax men who had been for a few years in 
the province, and who had influence with the government, as for 
example, Messrs. John Burbidge and William Best, who settled 
in the county, and Hon. Jonathan Belcher, John Duport, Jr., Robert 
Duport, and Joseph Gorham, who never did. In the 100,000 acres 
in Horton, designed for two hundred families, at first only a hun- 
dred and fifty-four families shared. Some of the remaining lots 
here, also, were given to Halifax men who never settled on them^ 
as for example, William Forster and Joseph Gerrish Gray. For 
the most part, however, in both townships the lots that remained 
after the first division were given to men who became residents 
of the townships. In the preceding lists of grantees are many 
names that have never been much known, if known at all, in the 
county. In not a few of these cases the grantees either never 
came, or if they did soon went away. The lands of the New Eng- 
land men who failed to come to the county were generally es- 
cheated and in time given to others, but some of the grantees who 
entered into possession of their lands, before many years sold their 
properties and returned to their early homes. Among such were, 
Abraham, Lemuel, and Thomas Harding, who probably returned 
to Connecticut; and Archelaus Hammond, Jonathan Longfellow, 
Jonathan Woodruff, and Jabez West, who removed to Machias, 
Maine. 

A tradition remains in the county that the first committee 
sent from Connecticut to view the Acadian lands were inclined to 
choose for themselves and the people who had sent them, homes in 
the township of Cornwallis. The second committee, who followed 
closely on the heels of the first, also liked Cornwallis best. By 
expatiating ''long and earnestly", however, on the value of the 
Grand Pre dyke, the second committee managed cleverly to get the 
first to fix on Horton for themselves; in this way. the second suc- 
ceeded in making their own settlement in the township they greatly 



84 KING'S COUNTY 

preferred. In some eases individual settlers were allowed to choose 
their own lots, and we may be sure that these privileged ones 
did not select the least desirable lands. That all the grantees 
should at first have been perfectly satisfied with the allotments 
made them is too much to expect, as a matter of fact there was, 
sooner or later, considerable dissatisfaction with the distribution 
of lands. As a result of this not a few transfers or changes in time 
came to be made. 

In the large grants in Cornwallis and Horton, as in all later 
grants in King's and other counties of the province, the govern- 
ment reserved for itself mines of gold, silver, precious stones, and 
lapis lazuli. In some grants coal, too, was reserved, but this was 
not the case in King's. An example of the early transfers of lands 
that the government permitted to be made is found in the aliena- 
tion. May 13, 1768, of the grant in Horton of Moses Clark, to Syl- 
vanus Miner, Jr., Thomas Miner, and James Miner. For the 
knowledge of still other transfers we are again indebted to Mr. 
Eobie Reid. Captain Jonathan Morecomb, Mr. Reid tells us, sold 
his share to John Burbidge and William Best in 1764 ; Ezra Downer 
sold his half share to Dr. Samuel Willoughby; James Mather sold 
his 1% shares to Col. Jonathan Sherman in October, 1770. John 
Arnold Hammond (from Newport, R. I.) came to Cornwallis and 
looked at his land, but did not care to settle on it. Accordingly, 
he sold part of it to Robert Stephens of Newport and others, 
Stephens giving for his purchase eight hundred "Spanish milled 
dollars". Finally Stephens sold his land to Hon. Samuel Chipman 
for a horse. Branch Blackmore settled in Cornwallis, but eventual- 
ly sold part of his land to Judah Wells. In the transfer he describes 
his land as lying by a road leading to "Stephen Chase's mills". 
Major William Canada, one of the first Cornwallis grantees, took 
up his land at what was named after him "Canada Creek". Sam- 
uel Brewster ' ' gave his name to the Brewster Plains, in Centreville. 
Part of his lands were taken on Bear Brook, in Woodville, a little 
above where William Killam's mill now is. Archelaus Hammond 
in 1771 gave his share and a half to his father-in-law, Simon New- 



COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 85 

comb, and went away. Brereton Poynton, the two Duports, Major 
Gorham, and others, were Halifax men of position who obtained 
shares for speculation, without any idea of settlement in the county". 

In an article on the origins of settlements in New Brunswick, 
in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Vol. 10 (1904) 
Professor "W. F. Ganong speaks of a movement, from about 1790 
to 1810, of settlers "from Horton, Cornwallis, and elsewhere in 
Nova Scotia", to the following places in New Brunswick: — Harvey, 
part of Hopewell (including Albert, Riverside, Hopewell Hill, and 
Hopewell Cape), and Alma. This immigration, says Professor 
Ganong, originated in large part the settlement of the older parts 
of the parishes mentioned, including Shepody River, Germantown, 
New llorton, and the coast from Cape Enrage through Little Rocher 
and Waterside, to Alma village. The names of some of the King's 
County people in this migration were : Bishop, Copp, Forsyth, Reid. 
[The migration was probably a little earlier than Professor Ganong 
makes it; a descendent of the Reid family of New Horton, N. B., 
says that Duncan Reid went in 1783]. 

Grants given in Horton subsequent to the large Grant of 1761 : 



Edward Hughes 
Joseph Gray 
William Forster 
James Kennedy 
Alexander Hay 
Richard Best 
Henry Burbidge 
Isaac Deschamps et al 
Lieut. Alex. Munroe 
John Eagell 
Charles Dickson, Jr. 
John Allen 
Thomas Lee 
Capt. James Wall et al 
John Clark 
Benjamin Peck, Sr. 
James Anderson 
John Copp 
Joseph Elderkin 



Acres 




1,000 


July 3, 1761 


500 


July 21, 1761 


1,000 


March 4, 1762 


1,000 


March 5, 1762 


1,000 


April 7, 1763 


500 


June 8, 1763 


500 


June 8, 1763 


1,000 


June 30, 1763 


500 


July 9, 1763 


500 


Aug. 24, 1763 


250 


Sept. 6, 1763 


500 


Sept. 6, 1763 


500 


Sept. 6, 1763 


1,500 


Sept. 17, 1763 


500 


Sept. 17, 1763 


750 


Jany. 10, 1764 


500 


Feb'y. 4, 1764 


750 


Feb'y. 4, 1764 


750 


Feb'y. 4, 1764 



86 KING'S COUNTY 



Jacob Brown 


500 


Daniel Dixon 


250 


Timothy Goodwin 


500 


Patrick Murray- 


250 


Simeon DeWolf 


500 


Jehiel DeWolf 


500 


Nathan DeWolf 


500 


Andrew Marsters 


500 


Daniel Hovey 


750 


James Billings et al 


1,000 


Joseph Woodworth 


6,250 


Jonathan Darrow 


500 


William Nesbitt 


500 


Joseph Gerrish Gray 


250 


Benjamin Beckwith et al 


5,000 


James Murdoch 


500 


John Turner 


250 


Elizabeth Buel et al 


2,250 


Benjamin Beckwith 


750 


Israel Harding 


950 


Lebbeus Harris 


500 


Grants given in Cornwallis, 


besides 


21, 1761, and December 31, 1764 


t: 


John Duport, Jr. 


500 


Eobert Duport 


500 


John Arnold Hammond 


500 


Handley Chipman et al 


1,000 


John Best 


750 


John Best 


750 


Jonathan Parker 


500 


Timothy Hatch 


500 


Caleb Wheaton 


250 


y Elisha Freeman 


750 


Robert Thompson 


500 


Jonathan Longfellow 


750 


Abel Burbidge 


500 


Joseph Gorham 


606 


James Mather, Brereton Poyn- 




ton, Benjamin Comte, and 




Andrew Belcher, Jr., 


2,250 


Benajah Phelps 


666 


Hon. Jonathan Belcher 


1,1662/3 


Nathan Longfellow 


666 


John Chipman 


500 


Benjamin Belcher 


600^2 



Feb'y. 4, 1764 
Feb'y. 4, 1764 
July 19, 1764 
July 19, 1764 
Aug. 29, 1764 
Aug. 29, 1764 
Aug. 29, 1764 
Aug. 29, 1764 
Nov. 30, 1764 
Nov. 30, 1764 
Oct. 31, 1765 
Feb'y. 19, 1766 
Aug. 3, 1767 
Sept. 30, 1767 
April 8, 1768 
Sept. 26, 1769 
Sept. 28, 1770 
Nov. 5, 1777 
Oct. 28, 1779 
March 29, 1784 
July 21, 1785 



Oct. 27, 1761 
Oct. 27, 1761 
Jan. 8, 1763 
Jan. 8, 1763 
April 8, 1763 
April 28, 1763 
April 28, 1763 
July 29, 1763 
Sept. 6, 1763 
Sept. 17, 1763 
Oct. 12, 1763 
Feb. 4, 1764 
Oct. 12, 1764 
Sept. 13, 1767 



April 14, 1768 
Sept. 26, 1769 
July 26, 1771 
April 8, 1773 
July 4, 1781 
1797 



COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 87 

It was originally intended to give at this point a list of the 
names of persons buying or selling land in Cornwallis or Horton 
for twenty years after the planters came. The list is a long one, 
but to the names of the original planters or their sons so few new 
names are added that it does not seem desirable to take room to 
introduce it here. In this time, many of the persons who did not 
settle on their lands, or who did not care to remain, disposed of 
their properties, but the buyers seem to have belonged chiefly to 
the families who did settle here, rather than to persons outside 
the original emigration. 

Earlier New England homes of some of the King's County 
people : 

CONNECTICUT 



Bolton 

Canterbury 

Colchester 



Danbury 

East Haddam 

Fairfield 

Greenwich 

Groton 

Guilford 

Hebron 

Killingworth 

Lebanon 



Lyme 

Middle Haddam 
New London (chiefly the north 
parish, now Montville) 



Bishop 
Parish 

Bigelow, Clark, Dodge, Gil- 
lette, Harris (probably), Ran- 
dall, Ransom, Rathbun, Skin- 
ner, "Wells 
Benedict 
Cone, Fuller 
Godfrey 

Lockwood, Randall 
Ratchford (perhaps) 
Turner 
Phelps 
DeWolf 

Avery, Barnaby, Bill, Bliss, 
Brewster, Calkin, Cogswell, 
Crane, Dewey, English, Fitch, 
Fuller, Huntington, Loomer, 
Newcomb, Pineo, Strong, Ter- 
ry, Tupper, "Webster, Wood- 
worth 

Beckwith, Butler, DeWolf, 
Lord, Mather, Pierson, Reid 
Stocking 

Benjamin, Bishop, Comstoek, 
Congdon, Denison, Fox (prob- 
ably), Hamilton, Harris, Turn- 
er, Wickwire, Willoughby 



88 KING'S COUNTY 

Norwich Beckwith, Bentley, Elderkin, 

Farnham, Gore, Starr, Welch, 
Witter (probably) 



Preston 


Davidson, Randall 


Saybrook 


DeWolf, Parker, Post 


Stonington 


Miner 


Tolland 


Eaton (earlier from Mass. 




West 


Wallingford 


Fitch 


Windham 


Brown, Cleveland 


Windsor 


Eockwell 




MASSACHUSETTS 


Boston 


Brown, Pingree 


Cambridge (possibly) Prescott 


Dartmouth 


Morton, Burgess 


Ipswich 


Kinsman 


Manchester 


Masters 


Martha's Vineyard 


Eand 


Nantucket 


Coffin 


Plymouth 


Blackmore 


Swansea 


Chase 


Sandwich 


Tupper 


Westfield 


Dickson 


Worcester 


Farns worth 




RHODE ISLAND 


Newport 


Chipman (earlier Mass.), G 




pin, Sanford 


North Kingston 


Harrington 


South Kingston 


Sherman, Steadman 


Tiverton 


Borden, Sheffield (probably) 




NEW HAMPSHIRE 


Alstead 


Baxter 


Greenland 


Whidden (probably) 


Nottingham 


Longfellow 


Peterborough 


Blanchard 




MAINE 


Portland 


Cox 


Vassalborough 


Bragg 



COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 89 

From New York state have been the following families: Ges- 
ner, Inglis, Moore, Seaman. From New Jersey, Van Buskirk. From 
England came the founders of the following families : Belcher, Best, 
Bligh, Burbidge, Coldwell, Coleman, North, Pudsey, Roscoe, 
Yewens. From Scotland, McKittrick, Sutherland. From Ireland: 
Allison, Caldwell, Dickie, Laird, Manning, Patterson. From 
"Wales, Twining. A few families had long been connected with Hali- 
fax before they sent representatives to King's County. Such were: 
Avery, Crawley, DeBlois, Johnstone, Kidston, Pryor, Pyke, Stairs, 
Thome, Tobin, Young. 



CHAPTER yi 
THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 

The third of the three historic townships of the present King's 
County is Aylesford, which lies to the west of Cornwallis and 
Horton, and borders on Wilmot township, in the County of An- 
napolis. For some time after the New England planters came to 
the county they were too much interested in the rich lands about 
Minas Basin and the rivers flowing into the basin and to give them- 
selves much concern about the territory lying farther west. As 
early as 1770, however, Major Charles Dickson, whose name is men- 
tioned in the large Horton grant, received a grant of 3,000 acres 
in Aylesford, his grant being one of the earliest recorded on the 
existing Aylesford plan. In 1771, Capt. John Terry, a Cornwallis 
grantee, received in Aylesford a grant of similar size, and these 
grants were followed in 1774 and later years by larger or smaller 
grants to other Cornwallis or Horton men. 

The general distribution of Aylesford lands, however, did not 
begin until the tide of Loyalist emigration that swept into the 
province at the close of the Revolutionary War made necessary 
the opening of many new regions to permanent settlement. From 
September, 1782, to December, 1783, the Loyalists came from New 
York in such numbers that the government was busy day and night 
making provision for their settlement. In furnishing lands for 
these exiles, the township of Aylesford, like the townships farther 
west, in Annapolis, Shelburne, and Digby counties, had an im- 
portant share. Among the grantees whose names stand on the 
Aylesford plan will be found not a few who are conspicuously 
known in the annals of the Revolution on the unpopular side. 

The special enactment of the legislature by which Aylesford 
was erected into a township, if there was such enactment, has not 



THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 91 

been discovered. In the third volume of his Documentary History 
of Nova Scotia, writing of the year 1786, Beamish Murdoch says: 
**A part of Wilmot was now set off as a separate township and 
named Aj^lesford, and a parish was set off at Parrsborough ". Up 
to and beyond this period, the erection of counties and the settle- 
ment of their boundaries, and the creation of townships and parishes, 
seems to have belonged exclusively to the Executive Council. A 
careful examination, however, of the Minute Books of the Council 
for a considerable number of years has failed to show any such 
action regarding Aylesford as that here mentioned so casually by 
Murdoch. The Minute Book of the Council for the year 1786 shows 
that July 20th of that year a memorial was presented by Lt. Col. 
Elisha Lawrence, *'in behalf of the inhabitants of Parrsborough, 
requesting that part of that township be erected into a parish", 
and that the following December this was done, but no mention 
whatever is made of the creation of the township of Aylesford. 
That the name Aylesford, however (given possibly after the fourth 
Earl of Aylesford, Lord of the Bedchamber to George III, who re- 
signed that office in 1783), was about this time somehow fastened 
to the western part of King's is very clear. It will be remembered 
that the original boundary between King 's and Annapolis was estab- 
lished in 1759, the township of "Wilmot, however (named after Gov- 
ernor Montague "Wilmot), which adjoins Aylesford, was not erected 
until five years later. Of this event, which took place in the first 
year of "Wilmot 's governorship, Mr. Murdoch has the following 
notice: In 1764, ""Wilmot township in the County of Annapolis 
was ordered to be surveyed and laid out". In the Calnek-Savary 
History of Annapolis, page 226, the author says: "This portion of 
the county ("Wilmot) was not settled quite so early as some other 
parts. It was not ordered to be laid out until 1764, or four years 
after the arrival of the Charming Molly with the first immigrants 
at Annapolis. It received its name from Governor "Wilmot, and 
comprised within the orignal boundaries a large part of the present 
township of Aylesford". 

That "Wilmot township, in the popular understanding at first 



92 KING'S COUNTY 

extended much within the present limit of King's, is perfectly clear, 
and whether the boundary between it and Aylesford in King's, until 
at least the end of the first quarter of the 19th century, was ever 
exactly defined, may indeed be strongly questioned. In 1770 Walter 
"Wilkins, received a thousand acres, and in 1771, as we have seen, 
Capt. John Terry three thousand, in "the township of Wilmot", 
but these tracts are now to be seen on the Aylesford plan. In 1783 
Brotherton Martin received two thousand acres, in 1784 John 
Huston a thousand, and 1785 the Morrison family a thousand, all 
of which are now in Aylesford. These were originally described, 
however, as ''in Wilmot", John Huston's being "in Wilmot, in 
the county of King's". In 1786 William Brenton and Dr. John 
Halliburton received land in "Upper Wilmot, in King's", but in 
1790 Bishop Charles Inglis and the Van Cortlandt family had grants 
"in the township of Aylesford, in King's County". In 1795 Rev. 
John Inglis also had a grant "in Aylesford in King's County", 
and January 31, 1797, Andrew Denison a grant of a thousand acres 
"in the township of Wilmot, now called Aylesford". In 1797 the 
Barclay family's grant is described as in the township of Ayles- 
ford, in King's County, but in 1802 grants to the Grassie and 
Ritchie families and to John Harris are described as "in the town- 
ship of Aylesford, within the County of Annapolis". Another 
grant of five thousand acres, given in 1810, is said to be "situated 
on the South Mountain, so called, in the township of Aylesford, in 
the county of Annapolis". Our conclusion, therefore, necessarily 
is that long after the township of Aylesford was more or less 
formally created, the boundary between it and Wilmot was quite 
unsettled, and that whether an exact spot was in one township or 
the other was often entirely uncertain in the public mind. 

In 1788 "Seven Mile River" is called the western boundary of 
Aylesford, and the distance between the eastern and western 
boundaries is given as exactly ten miles. In the Report of the S. P. 
G. for 1789-90, Wilmot is described as forty miles distant from 
Cornwallis and as "twenty miles long, the township of Aylesford 
intervening, which is sixteen miles long". In the former township, 



THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 93 

it is reported, there are upwards of six hundred inhabitants, in the 
latter three hundred, and in both townships the population is said 
to be increasing. In 1803 the Rev. John Inglis, missionary at Ayles- 
ford, writes the Society that the township of Aylesford forms a 
square of ten miles, distant from Halifax ninety miles, and from 
Annapolis Royal thirty-eight miles. The township's population, 
he writes, comprises forty-two families. In 1828 Aylesford had a 
population of 1,054 ; in 1833 it had 1,382. 

The following list of early grantees in Upper Aylesford is 
taken from a plan in the Crown Land Office in Halifax. The list 
is probably not complete, but it undoubtedly comprises the chief 
names of the earliest owners of land in the township. 

AYLESFORD GRANTEES 

Barclay Beverly Robinson 

Barclay DeLancey 

Barclay Henry 

Barclay Thomas 

Barclay Thomas, Jr. 

Bayard Ethelinda 

Bayard Louisa 

Bayard Maria 

Bayard Robert 

Bayard Samuel Vetch 

Beckwith Andrew (heirs of) 

Beckwith Benjamin 

Benedict Jabez 

Bowlby John Charles (and Fran 
cis Hutchinson) 

Bowen Nathan 

Bowen Noah 

Brenton William and John Halli- 
burton 

Brenton William and John Halli- 
burton 

Brown Darius 

Brown Ezekiel 

Brown Samuel 

Brown Samuel 

Burden Elisha 



ACRES i 




1,000 


May 1, 1797 


1,000 


May 1, 1797 


1,000 


May 1, 1797 


1,000 


May 1, 1797 


1,000 


May 1, 1797 


4,730 


Feb'y 22, 1803 


4,730 


Feb'y 22, 1803 


4,730 


Feb'y 22, 1803 


4,730 


Feb'y 22, 1803 


4,730 


Feb'y 22, 1803 


486 


Aug. 30, 1783 


470 


Aug. 30, 1783 


300 


Nov., 1790 


300 


Jan'y 3, 1788 


403 


Dec. 10, 1774 


400 


Nov. 18, 1774 


856 


July 20, 1786 


150 


July 20, 1786 


400 


Dec. 10, 1774 


402 


Dec. 10, 1774 


300 


March 23, 1810 


100 




450 


Oct. 8, 1812 



94 



KING'S COUNTY 



Chandler John 




ACRES 
1,000 


Dec. 20, 1787 


Cleveland Lemuel 




1,379 


Aug. 30, 1783 


Crane Joseph 




200 


A^ril 6, 1814 


Dickson Charles 




3,000 


1700 


(This grant renewed to his heirs Oct. 23, 


1779) 


Farnsv/orth Daniel 




250 


March 23, 1810 


Fowler Capt. John 




200 


Nov., 1770 


Grassie George 




646 


June 1, 1802 


Grassie George, Jr. 




646 


June 1, 1802 


Grassie John Alex. William 


646 


June 1, 1802 


Graves Elias 




400 


March 23, 1810 


Harcourt John 




100 


March 23, 1810 


Halliburton John (and 


William 




Brenton) 




856 


July 20, 1786 


Halliburton John (and 


William 




Brenton) 




150 


July 20, 1786 


Harris James 




250 


May 5, 1814 


Harris John 




504 


June 1, 1802 


Hinds Benjamin 




500 


Oct. 14, 1774 


Huston John 




1,000 


Nov. 5, 1784 


Hutchinson Francis (and 


John 




Charles Bowlby) 




300 


Jan'y 3, 1788 


Inglis Bishop Charles 




967 


Dec. 31, 1790 


Inglis Bishop Charles 




162 


(date not known) 


Inglis Rev. John 




200 


June 29, 1795 


Kinne Jeremiah 




400 


Oct. 8, 1812 


Magee Henry 




500 


Feb'y 16, 1786 


Martin Brotherton 




2,000 


June 7, 1783 


Miller William 




200 


March 23, 1810 






(This is 


probably correct.) 


Morden James 




5,000 


Sept. 10, 1783 


Morrison Archibald 




1,000 


July 7, 1785 


Morrison Elizabeth 




1,000 


July 7, 1785 


Morrison George 




1,000 


July 7, 1785 


Morrison Hugh 




1,000 


July 7, 1785 


Morrison James 




1,000 


July 7, 1785 


Morrison John 




1,000 


July 7, 1785 


Morrison Margaret 




1,000 


Julv 7, 1785 


Morrison Robert 




1,000 


July 7, 1785 



George and Hugh Morrison also have 1,000 acres, Feb'y 15, 
1787 ; John Morrison has 1,000 acres, July 14, 1778. 



THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 



95 





ACRES 




Ornisby Matthew 


300 


Feb'y. 16, 1786 


Orpin George 


450 


March 23, 1810 


Orpin Joseph 


500 


March 23, 1810 


Palmer Benjamin 


500 


March 23, 1810 


Palmer Elijah M. 


100 


March 23, 1810 


Palmer Enoch Lewis 


200 


March 23, 1810 


Palmer George 


127 


March 23, 1810 


Palmer George B. 


50 


March 23, 1810 


Palmer Lewis 


300 


March 23, 1810 


Parker William 


500 


March 23, 1810 


Philip Martha 


500 


Dec. 20, 1787 


Phipps David et al 


5,000 


Oct. 28, 1783 


Pierce Henry \ 
Pierce William > 


200 


Feb'y. 16, 1786 


Piere Lewis 


250 


March 23, 1810 


Piere Lewis 


100 




Potter Henry 


1,000 


April 6, 1768 




(Confirmed July 11, 1778.) 


Ritchie Alicia Maria 


646 


June 1, 1802 


Ritchie Thomas 


646 


June 1, 1802 


Robertson Daniel 


100 


March 23, 1810 


Robertson John 


100 


March 23, 1810 


Robertson William Henry 


200 


March 23, 1810 


Shaffro George 


500 


Dec. 22, 1780 


(He had entered into possession in 1768) 




Skinner John 


500 




Spinney Joseph 


249 


Aug. 30, 178a 


Terry Capt. John 


3,000 


Dee. 22, 1771 


Van Buskirk Garrett 


250 


May 5, 1814 


Van Buskirk Henry 


250 


May 5, 1314 


Van Buskirk John 


250 


May 5, 1814 


Van Buskirk Lawrence, Jr. 


250 


May 5, 1814 


Van Buskirk Lawrence, Jr. 


200 


May 23, 1810 


Van Buskirk Samuel 


300 


March 23, 1810 


Van Buskirk William 


250 


May 5, 1814 



Also, to John Van Buskirk and others, 5,000 acres, March 23, 
1810, and to Henry Van Buskirk 's children, 300 acres. 
Van Cortlandt Arthur Auch- 



muty 


50 


Dec. 


31, 


1790 


Van Cortlandt Catherine 


50 


Dec. 


31, 


1790 


Van Cortlandt Charlotte 


50 


Dec. 


31, 


1790 


Van Cortlandt Elizabeth 


50 


Dec. 


31, 


1790 



50 


Dec. 31, 1790 


50 


Dee. 31, 1790 


500 


Dee. 31, 1790 


50 


Dec. 31, 1790 


50 


Dec. 31, 1790 


500 

1 


Dee. 31, 1790 


1,050 


Dee. 31, 1790 


50 


Dec. 31, 1790 


50 


Dec. 31, 1790 


50 


Dec. 31, 1790 


500 


Sept. 3, 1784 


250 


Feb'y. 16, 1786 


500 


July 6, 1784 


1,000 


Oct. 20, 1770 


200 





96 KING'S COUNTY 



Van Cortlandt Gertrude 
Van Cortlandt Henry Clinton 
Van Cortlandt Jacob Ogden 
Van Cortlandt Margaret 
Van Cortlandt Mary Ricketts 
Van Cortlandt Ensign Philip 
Van Cortlandt Major Philip and 

wife 
Van Cortlandt Sarah 
Van Cortlandt Sophia Sawyer 
Van Cortlandt Stephen 
"West John 
"West John 
"Wilkins James 
Wilkins Walter 
Wilson Elizabeth's children 

Other early grantees, with dates of grants not ascertained, were : 
Richard Banks, Thomas Chittick, Bernard Me Dade ; Alexander, 
Dawson, James, John, and Thomas, Patterson; James Pierce, 
William Pierce, Jr., and Samuel Randall. These men had grants 
varying in size from 77 to 366 acres. 

March 23, 1810, a grant to which we have before referred, 
containing over five thousand acres, "situated on the South Moun- 
tain, so called, in the Township of Aylesf ord, County of Annapolis ' ', 
was given as follows: To John Van Buskirk, 400 acres; Lewis 
Palmer, 300 ; Samuel Van Buskirk, 300 ; Lewis Piere, 250 ; Lawrence 
Van Buskirk, Jr., 200 ; William Miller, 200 ; Daniel Robertson, 100 ; 
William Parker, 500; John Harcourt, 100; Samuel Brown, 200; 
George Orpin, 450; Elias Graves, 400; William Henry Robertson, 
200; Elijah M. Palmer, 100; John Robertson, 100; Benjamin 
Palmer, 500; Daniel Farnsworth, 250; Joseph Orpin, 500; and "to 
the Rev. John Inglis, D. D., Rector of St. Mary's Parish, and 
Alexander Walker and Henry Van Buskirk, Esq., church wardens 
and trustees of the parish, 100 in part of a glebe, and 100 in part 
of a school". 

Until 1835, what is known as Lower Aylesford remained almost 
unsettled. About this date the government began to sell land here 



THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 97 

also, the price commonly being £10, 18. 9, a hundred acres. On 
the plan of Lower Aylesford, in the Crown Land Office, will ac- 
cordingly be found a large number of names of persons who have 
purchased land in this region, many of them not residents of the 
county and having no connection with it except the owning of these 
tracts. Since 1854 no free grants worthy of mention, if any at all, 
have been made in Upper Aylesford, but in Lower Aylesford the 
government is selling land in small quantities still. The largest of 
these sales have reached 1,400 or 1,500 acres, the smallest as few 
as 25 acres. 

Of the early Aylesford grantees the government simply exacted 
promise of settlement, or of cultivation of a certain portion of the 
grant, within a reasonable time. In the case of Henry Potter, 
for example, who received his grant in 1778, the nominal quit-rent 
of one farthing per acre for ever was exacted. Of William Brenton 
and John Halliburton, who received their united grant in 1786, 
the government demanded that they should within three years, for 
every fifty acres of "plantable land", clear and drain three acres 
of swampy or sunken ground, or drain three acres of marsh, if any 
such were contained in their grant, or erect on some part of their 
land one good dwelling house, to be at least twenty feet in length 
and sixteen feet in breadth, and to put on their land * ' the like 
number of neat cattle for every fifty acres, etc". 

From the foregoing account it will be seen that the first grant- 
ing of lands in Aylesford gave no enormous blocks for wide dis- 
tribution, as was the case in Cornwallis and Horton. In Aylesford, 
the lands were given in single tracts, varying in amount from one 
hundred to seven thousand acres, few individuals, however, receiv- 
ing more than five or six hundred. In some of the larger grants 
several members of the same family participated, but to a few in- 
dividuals, grants much larger than any single grant given in Corn- 
wallis or Horton were allowed. Charles Dickson, of Horton, for 
instance, as we have seen, in 1770 received in Aylesford a grant of 
three thousand acres, and James Morden in ]783 one of five 
thousand. 



98 KING'S COUNTY 

Between 1820 and 1833, transfers of land were made in Ayles- 
ford among persons of the following names : Allan, Banks, Barclay^ 
Beckwith, Black, Bowlby, Brennan, Butler, Cassidy, Charlton, Chip- 
man, Cole, Condon, Crane, Crocker, Crowly, DeWolf, Dolan, 
Dugan, Edson, Elliott, Ellis, Falconer, Farnsworth, Fisher, Fos- 
ter, Eraser, Gates, Gilpin, Graves, Grogan, Halliburton, Harris, Hill, 
Hinds, lUsley, Inglis, Jackson, Jaques, Keaton, King, Kinne, Leaver, 
Lovett, Magee, Marshall, McKay, McNaught, Miller, Morden, Mor- 
gan, Morris, Morrison, Morton, Mudge, Neily, Nichols, Ogilvie, 
Orpin, Owen, Palmer, Parker, Patterson, Perkins, Pierce, Prawl, 
Quin, Randall, Reid, Rich, Ritchie, Roach, Ryarson, Ruggles, Saun- 
ders, Smith, Solomon, Spinney, Stewart, Trainer, Truesdale, Tupper, 
Van Buskirk, Vroom, Walker, "Walsh, Ward, Warner, Welton, West, 
Willett, Wilson, Woodbury. Among these transfers are the fol- 
lowing : From Rev. John Inglis to John Ogilvie, Oct. 12, 1820 ; from 
Henry Van Buskirk to Rev. Edwin Gilpin, Jan'y. ], 1827; from 
Rev. John Inglis to William Pearce, July 15, 1830 ; from Rev. Edwin 
Gilpin to Rev. Henry Lambeth Owen, Feb'y- 19> 1833; from George 
Foreman Morden, of Scotland Yard, Whitehall, in the city of West- 
minster, London, Esq., a captain in H. M. Army and John Edward 
Buller of the Inner Temple, in the County of Middlesex, gentle- 
man, to John Butler Butler, Esq., Commissary general of H. M, 
Forces, now residing at Bouverie Sheet, Fleet Street, London, May 
28 and 29, and June 1, 1833. The land conveyed in this last trans- 
fer was originally owned by James Morden, Esq., and by him was 
willed to his wife, James Spry Heaton, and Alexander Thomson. 

The earliest book of Aylesford Records, in the county Registry 
of Deeds bears on the fly leaf the date 1819. The first entry 
in this book is as follows: "To all People to whom these presents 
shall come. Greeting — Know ye that I, Alexander Walker and Ann 
Walker, my wife, of the Township of Aylesford, County of King's 
and Province of Nova Scotia, Esquire. For and in Consideration 
of the sum of 50 pounds of Good and Lawful Money of this province 
to me in hand paid by Francis Ryarson, of the Township of Clem- 



THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 99 

ents and County of Annapolis, Gentleman, the Eeceipt whereof we 
do hereby acknowledge, Have Granted, Bargained, Sold, Aliened^ 
and Confirmed unto the said Francis Eyarson, His Heirs and Exe- 
cutors, Administrators and Assigns forever, a certain tract or par- 
cel of land bounded as follows, etc". The instrument is signed by 
Alexander and Ann Walker, and witnessed by Catherine D. Walker 
and Daniel Robinson. The date is Sept. 29, 1819. 

Of the settlement of the townships of Wilmot and Aylesford, 
the Rev. Dr. Edward Manning Saunders of Halifax has written 
somewhat at length, and from an interesting paper of his, yet un- 
published, we are permitted to quote. Dr. Saunders says: ''The 
settlement of that part of the Annapolis Valley included in Ayles- 
ford and Wilmot (or from Kentville to Paradise) did not begin 
until some years after 1760. That was because being beyond the 
flow of the tides it afforded no chance for village life, and because 
lying as it did, so far in the interior, the English settlers feared 
to enter it on account of the Indians. At last, however, a few fam- 
ilies penetrated it from the west, some of them even pushing up from 
western Wilmot into the County of King's. Then began an inter- 
mittent stream of emigration from the east, which flowed as far 
west as the east side of Caribou Bog and there met the western 
stream. At Berwick have ever since been found names which 
originally belonged to both the east and the west, — ^Parkers and 
Shaws from Annapolis; and Skinners, Huntingtons, Lyons', and 
Loomers', who had originally settled farther east in King's. The 
greatest accession to the population, however, came at the time of 
the American Revolution. This influx began in 1776 and did not 
cease till 1784 or '85. Some of the people who came at this time 
were army officers of various ranks, who had served on the British 
side, and who at the close of the war retired to spend the rest of 
their days in this quiet valley. Col. Samuel Vetch Bayard, Col. 
James Eager, and Brigadier General Ruggles, settled in Wilmot. 
The Van Buskirks settled in both Wilmot and Aylesford. Henry 
Van Buskirk pitched his tent near where the Anglican Church of 
Upper Aylesford now stands. He was the squire and the merchant 



100 KING'S COUNTY 

for a large section of the country around him. After 1795 he had 
for his neighbor in summer Bishop Charles Inglis. William Rhodes, 
from Philadelphia, married a daughter of Alden Bass of Nictaux, 
he too lived near St. Mary's Church in Upper Aylesford. His father 
was a German from Leipsic. He had a large family of daughters, 
and but one son, William, the latter an enterprising man who had 
the esteem of the whole community. 

"With the officers of the Revolution came a large number of 
soldiers, who settled in various parts of the two townships. Hand- 
ley Mountain, in Annapolis County, was chiefly settled by them. 
It is doubtful if any part of the wilderness of America of equal 
size was ever settled with people varying as much in race, religion, 
culture and social standing. First there were the stern, unbending 
Puritans of New England, then followed the Loyalists, devoted 
adherents of monarchy and the established church. Many of the 
settlers were rude and boisterous, but men and women of the finest 
culture were scattered among them; English, American, Scotch, 
Irish, German, and Dutch were intermixed by marriage or lived 
side by side, in every neighborhood. The earliest settlers were of 
the adventurous element among the Puritans, who sold out their 
uplands and marshes further west in Annapolis and pushed on 
eastward into the wilderness. The first of these who came took 
up lands so as to build their log houses near the river. This gave 
them the advantage of the meadow lands for hay, and the open 
plains for the cultivation of other crops. It made it also convenient 
for them to fish in the river, as well as to shoot game in the woods 
to the south. Later comers took up lands on the mountain slopes, 
which when the forest was cleared, yielded good crops of wheat, 
followed by good crops of grass. Indeed, the soil produced in 
abundance all kinds of grains and vegetables. 

"By the settlers' hands the primeval forest vanished and home- 
steads appeared in its place. The people's dwellings were rude, 
but there was plenty of fuel to keep them warm. At first their 
lands did not produce enough to meet their wants; to supply this 
deficiency ship-timber, masts, oars, staves, shingles, deals, and 



THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 101 

boards were taken from the forests along the Annapolis River in 
Aylesforcl and AVilmot and rafted either to Bridgetown or to An- 
napolis, for shipment to other places in America, to the West Indies, 
or to Europe. Partial but substantial supplies for the table came 
from the salmon and shad in the river, and the moose and caribou 
in the woods. From the first, in imitation of the French, the farm- 
ers not only raised a great variety of vegetables and cereals, but 
they planted apple, cherry, and plum trees, which in the rich virgin 
soil soon came to maturity. 

"A look into the homes on the plains and mountain slopes, 
all the way from Kentville to Paradise, on a winter's night, when a 
howling snow storm was sweeping over the country, reveals a picture 
of domestic life long since passed away. There were the great fire- 
places piled up with logs, supplied by the big strong boys. Around 
sat the grandfathers and grandmothers, the fathers and mothers, 
and the young men and women, of the families. The women were 
busy knitting or sewing, not one was idle. The boys were making 
splint brooms or twine rabbit snares. The lights and shadows were 
dancing on the log-walls, rough board floors, and rude ceilings. 
There was an occasional roar in the chimney in response to a fresh 
blast of wind from outside". Stories were often told by these fire- 
sides of ghost-lights seen dancing about haunted places where 
people were buried, of the remarkable power of the mineral rod in 
revealing where gold had been hidden, of ghosts stopping the work 
of men digging for Spanish doubloons, buried by notable pirates ; of 
witch malevolence, and most terrible of all, of Indian murders and 
scalpings. Such relations indeed, were not uncommon in the other 
townships of King's besides Aylesford. 

The Aylesford and Wilmot people had their diversions too^ 
notably their land clearings, when "twenty strong men with a full 
supply of Jamaica rum would make the heavy black logs roll about 
merrily, and mount each other in great piles ready for the blazing 
torch. Habitual drunkenness, however, was neither common nor 
respectable." The people, indeed, were generally not only indus- 
trious but moral, and were peculiarly open to the influences of educa- 



102 KING'S COUNTY 

tion and religion. In Aylesford and in "Wilmot the Society for th« 
Propagation of the Gospel early established schools, but as few of 
the children of these scattered townships were able to attend these 
schools, the people themselves often engaged disbanded soldiers to 
teach their families. These pedagogues, says Dr. Saunders, were 
often very ill-fitted to teach, but they were not an unmixed evil 
to the communities where they came. "They often drank, but they 
boarded round and made the firesides lively, and they kept the desire 
for education alive". Travelling in these townships was for a long 
time chiefly on horseback, people often riding double, as was common 
in other parts of America. About the houses where people met for 
religious worship on Sundays horses always stood saddled waiting 
to take their owners home when service was done. 

Of the conspicuous Loyalist families whose names appear in the 
list of grantees we have given, something must here be said. The Bar- 
clay family, from New York, never lived in Aylesford, but for a time 
did live in Wilmot. On the north wall of the chancel of St. Paul's 
Chapel, Broadway, New York, rests a tablet of white marble, set on 
another of black. It is surmounted by the arms of the Barclays of 
Urie, Scotland, and was erected in memory of Colonel Thomas 
Barclay (son of the Rev. Henry Barclay, D. D., Rector of Trinity 
Church, New York), born in New York, Oct. 12, 1753. In the 
history of Annapolis county, and in the Sabines' Loyalists will be 
found interesting sketches of Col. Barclay. Graduating at Columbia 
(King's) College, and for a while studying law in the office of John 
Jay, at the outbreak of the Revolution he joined the British forces 
under Sir "William Howe, as a captain in the Loyal American Regi- 
ment. Promoted by Sir Henry Clinton to the rank of Major he 
served through the war, and in 1783, his estate confiscated, wilh his 
family he fled to Nova Scotia. In Annapolis he took up the practice 
of law, and until 1799, when he was appointed British Consul at 
New York, he was closely identified with the political interests of 
his adopted province. In Nova Scotia he was a member and speaker 
of the House of Assembly, was Lieutenant-Colonel of the Royal Nova 
Scotia Regiment ; during the war of 1812 was ' ' Commissary for the 



THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 103 

care and exchange of prisoners of war", and later was England's 
Commissioner with Mr. Holmes, of the United States, to settle the 
boundary between the two governments in Passamaquoddy Bay. 
His wife was Susanna, ninth child of Peter DeLancey oC Ivosehill, 
West Farms, New York, and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Cad- 
wallader Golden. His sister, Cornelia was first the wife of Lieut.-Col. 
Stephen DeLancey (eldest son of Brigadier-General Samuel Oliver 
DeLancey), secondly, of Sir Hudson Lowe, K. C. B. His sister Anna 
Dorothea was the wife of Col. Beverly Robinson, who after the war 
settled permanently in St. John, N. B. In the History of Annapolis 
will be found a letter from Col. Barclay to the Governor of Nova 
Scotia, Lord Dalhousie, protesting against the escheat that had been 
threatened of his and his family's lands in Aylesford, on account of 
his failure to settle on or improve them. His excuse for not doing 
so is that he had been occupied for years wicb important foreign 
business for the crown. Of Col. Barclay's sons, Henry DeLancey, 
Beverly Robinson, George Cornwell, Anthony, and probably Thomas 
Edmund, were students at King's College, "Windsor. Anthony Bar- 
clay, who like his father was long British Consul at New York, 
matriculated at King's, Windsor, in 1805, took his degree of B. A. in. 
1809, and was made an hororary D. C. L. in 1827, Col. DeLancey 
Barclay was an officer in the British army, was at the Battle oi' 
Waterloo, and for some years was an aide-de-camp to King 
George IV. 

The Bayard family, of mingled Huguenot and Dutch ancestry, 
whose grant of 4,730 acres in Aylesford was almost as large as that 
of the Barclays, settled permanently in Wilmot. The head of this 
family was Col. Samuel Vetch Bayard, a son of Stephen and Alida 
(Vetch) Bayard, of New York, and a grandson on his mother's side, 
of Col. Samuel Vetch, the first English governor (appointed also thiri 
governor) of Nova Scotia. Col. Samuel Vetch Bayard married, April 
24, 1778, Catherine Van Home, and had children : William, born at 
Halifax, N. S., Feb. 14, 1779 ; Elizabeth, born in New York, Dec. 1, 
1780; Catharine, born Oct. 13, 1782; Stephen, born in Cornwallis, 
Oct. 26, 1785, married Elizabeth Anne De Lancey; Robert, born al 



104 KING'S COUNTY 

"Wilmot, March 1, 1788; Samuel, born at Wilmot, March 1, 1790; 
Frances, born July 25, 1793 ; Ethelinda ; Eliza, married to George L. 
Cooper; Louisa; and Sarah. Col. Bayard's son Eobert, born in 1788^ 
was a physician. He entered King's College, Windsor, in 1803, but 
seems not to have graduated. He became a physician, practised for 
some years in Kentville, but finally removed to St. John, N. B., 
where he probably died. In 1871, when he was 83, the degree of 
D. C. L. was conferred on him by King's. 

William Brenton was a brother-in-law of Dr. John Halliburton, 
and an uncle of Sir Brenton Halliburton, Nova Scotia 's eighth Chief 
Justice. He was a son of the Hon. Jahleel and his second wife, Mary 
(Neargrass) (Scott) Brenton, of Newport, R. I., where he was bom 
Jan. 4, 1750, and was a brother not only of Mrs. John Halliburton, 
but of the first wife of Hon. Joseph Gerrish of Halifax, and a half 
brother of Hon. Judge James Brenton, M. L. C, of the Nova Scotia 
Supreme Bench, who died at Halifax, in 1806, or early in 1807. 
William Brenton, the Aylesford grantee, married in Newport, R. I., 
Feb. 24, 1779, Frances, daughter of Benjamin and Mary Wickham^ 
and Sabine says that two of his sons were in the Royal navy. 

John Chandler was probably the Hon, John Chandler, a 
notable Loyalist of Worcester, Mass., "one of the six inhabitants of 
Worcester who were included in the act of banishment forbidding 
the return of former citizens of the state who had joined the enemy". 
He was born Feb. 26, 1720-1, in New London, Conn,, married first, 
March 4, 1740-1, Dorothy Paine of Worcester, secondly, June 11, 
1746, Mary Church, of Bristol, R. I., and had in all fourteen children. 
He had a large and valuable estate in Worcester, and was a very 
prominent person there. He died in London, Sept. 26, 1800, and was 
buried in Islington. He was nearly related to the Chandlers of New 
Brunswick. 

Lemuel Cleveland, Jr., son of Lemuel Cleveland, formerly of 
New London, Conn, (who probably settled in New Brunswick), and 
his wife Lydia (Woodward), was born about 1750, and died after 
1800. He married a Miss Sabeans, but probably left no family He 



THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 105 

and his wife lived in "Wilmot, and he willed his property, it is said, 
to Lemuel Cleveland Banks, of Nictaux. 

Captain John Fowler was undoubtedly a Loyalist from West- 
chester, N. Y., but precisely what his relationship was to Jonatlian 
Fowler, born in East Chester, N. Y., Sept. 13, 1713, who "went to 
Nova Scotia with Samuel Sneden and other" in 1783, and for a 
little while lived in Digby, we do not know. From Jonathan's sons, 
it is said, are descended the Fowlers of Digby and Annapolis 
counties, some of whom have been known also in King's County. 
Jonathan, himself died Feb. 9, 1784, and was buried in St. Paul's 
Churchyard, East Chester. His wife, whom he married in 1840, was 
Anne Seymour, born in 1720, died Sept. 11, 1803. 

Of the Halliburton and Inglis families we shall give an account 
in the Family Sketches. The Van Buskirk family, who settled in 
Aylesford and have always been prominently identified with that 
township's progress, were New Jersey Loyalists, their descent beinsj 
mingled Danish and Dutch. John Van Buskirk (Laurens, Andres- 
sen), married Theodosia , had a family, and died in 1783. Of his 

children, Lawrence, born in 1729, in Hackensack, Bergen County, 
New Jersey, had an estate in New Jersey and owned slaves. Pro- 
testing against the Revolution, he became a captain in the King's 
Orange Eangers, and in 1783 fled to St. John, N. B. Soon after, he 
removed, so it is said, to Kentville, from there going to Aylesford, in 
which township he purchased a farm of Daniel Bowen. Pie married 
his first cousin, Jannetje Van Buskirk, daughter of his uncle Abra- 
ham, who died in Shelburne, N. S., in 1791. He himself 
died in Shelburne (according to Sabine), in 1803. His prop- 
erty in New Jersey, which was confiscated, was worth £2,400. 
Abraham Van Buskirk, son of John and Theodosia, a brother of 
Lawrence, born about 1740, also became a Revolutionary officer. He 
was colonel of the Fourth Battalion of New Jersey Volunteers, and 
was second in command to Brigadier-General Arnold at Saratoga^ 
He settled at Shelburne in 1784, and was the first mayor of that 
town. 

Of the Van-Cortlandt family, Philip Van-Cortlandt, son of 



106 KING'S COUNTY 

Stephen (who died in 1756), and his wife Mary (Ricketts), born in 
1739, was the representative of the family and owner of the Manor 
of Cortlandt, in Westchester, N. Y. Among the Loyalist families 
who accepted the hospitality of Nova Scotia none can more properly 
lay claim to aristocratic lineage than the Van Cortlandts. They 
were, it is said, of noble Dutch origin, their ancestor coming to New 
York in 1629, as secretary to the first governor sent out by the 
States' General. From the New Netherlands government the family 
received two manors, Yonkers and Cortlandt, but in the Revolution, 
Philip Van Cortlandt, adhering to the Crown, and as "an officer in 
the volunteers being frequently engaged against the Whigs", shared 
the fate of so many other Loyalists and had his estates confiscated, 
"as well in possession as in reversion". In the act of confiscation 
his claim as the representative of Cortlandt Manor was, of course, 
included. From New York he came to Nova Scotia, but from this 
province went to England, where he died in 1814. His wife, Cathar- 
ine, a daughter of Jacob Ogden, died also in England in 1828. 
He had in all, born, twenty-three children, but in the foregoing list 
of Aylesford grantees, we have the names probably of all who were 
living in 1790. Of his sons, Sabine says that Arthur Auchmuty was 
captain in the 45th Regiment, and died at Madras. Henry Clinton 
was a major in the 31st Regiment, and in 1835 was living in the East 
Indies ; Jacob Ogden was a captain in some regiment and was killed 
in Spain in 1811 ; Philip, Jr., born in 1766, twin with Stephen, was 
an ensign in the 3rd Battalion of New Jersey Volunteers in the Revo- 
lution. Of his daughters, Gertrude was married to Vice-Admiral 
Sir Edward Buller, Bart. Whether the Van Cortlandt family's 
large grant in Aylesford was escheated we have not inquired, from 
the absence of the Van Cortlandt name in the record of early trans- 
fers of land in the township it would seem as if it could not have 
been sold by its original owners. 

The complete history of the Loyalist migration to Nova 
Scotia between 1776 and 1784 remains yet to be written. In 1776 
Howe's fleet brought almost the whole of the pre-Revolutionary 
aristocracy of Boston to the town of Halifax, and at the close of the 



THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 107 

war, as we have said, such multitudes from New York, New Jersey, 
and colonies farther south, landed at the ports of Shelburne and 
Annapolis Koyal, that the problem of how to locate them became 
almost too difficult for the the government to solve. ' ' Every habita- 
tion is crowded with them (the Loyalists)", writes the Rev. Jacob 
Bailey, at Annapolis, in 1782, ' ' and many are unable to procure any 
lodgings. Many of these distressed people left large possessions in 
the rebellious colonies, and their suffering on account of their loy- 
alty, and their present uncertain and destitute condition, render 
them very affecting objects of compassion". "Since the commence- 
ment of this week", he again writes, in October, 1783, "there have 
arrived at Annapolis five ships, eight brigs, and four sloops, besides 
schooners, with near a thousand people from (New) York. They 
must be turned on shore without any shelter in this rugged season". 
In November, he writes: "Fifteen hundred fugitive Loyalists are 
just landed here from York in affecting circumstances, fatigued 
with a long and stormy passage, sickly and destitute of shelter from 
advances of winter. * * * For six months past these wretched 
outcasts of America and Britain have been landing at Annapolis and 
various other parts of this province". About the same time, he 
writes the Secretary of the S. P. G. : " Since my last, of August 15th, 
above seventeen hundred persons have arrived at Annapolis, besides 
the Fifty-seventh Regiment, in consequence of which my habitation 
is crowded. The church has been fitted for the reception of several 
hundreds, and multitudes are still without shelter in this rigorous 
and stormy season. Near four hundred of these miserable exiles 
have perished in a violent storm, and I am persuaded that disease, 
disappointment, poverty, and chagrin will finish the course of many 
more before the return of another spring. So much attention is 
required in settling these strangers that nothing of a publick nature 
can be pursued to effect". From records like these we are able to 
gain some true idea of the unhappy conditions under which the Loy- 
alists who received land in Aylesford entered the province. 

Memoranda in the Register of St. Mary's Parish, Aylesford, 
give the inhabitants in the township, in January, 1802, as 42 families, 



108 KING'S COUNTY 

comprising 63 men, 62 women, 137 children, and 3 negroes. In 1828, 
as 172 families, comprising 560 males, 495 females, — in all 1,055 souls. 
In 1833 (census taken by the Rev. Henry L. Owen), as 214 families, 
comprising 694 males, 688 females, — in all 1,382 souls. In 1851 
(census taken by W. Miller), 1,954 souls. In this last total number, 
880 are given as Baptists, 364 as Methodists, 333 as of the Church of 
England, 275 as Roman Catholics, 74 as Presbyterians, 8 as of the 
Free Church, 2 as Universalists, 18 not specified or not known. At 
this period, Aylesford had 10 day schools, with 274 children in atten- 
dance. The area of the township is given as 280 square miles. 

In a sketch of the History of Aylesford township, the village of 
Morden, on the shore of the Bay of Fundy, demands especial notice. 
This hamlet, which until recent times was called ' ' French Cross ' ', was 
the scene of one of the saddest episodes in the history of the deporta- 
tion of the Acadians from King 's County. At the time of the expul- 
sion, as we have seen, no inconsiderable number of the French fled 
to the woods and so escaped the edict of exile that had been passed 
upon them. A newspaper article which we shall presently repro- 
duce, describes in detail the escape of a group of the Minas Acadians 
to Aylesford, and the terrible sufferings they endured in the winter 
they spent there, — sufferings, indeed, that ended in death for many 
of them in the lonely Aylesford woods. "When Spring came, those 
who survived went in canoes up the Bay of Fundy, probably to 
Cumberland, perhaps, however, crossing, to New Brunswick, but 
before they went, to mark the graves of their dead, they erected a 
wooden cross on a bluff near the present village of Morden. 

In the year 1815, says the late John E. Orpin, "I first came 
across the North Mountain from the valley, with my brothers, to 
this place, for the purpose of fishing. I saw on the point a cross 
about seven feet high, which was called by everybody the French 
Cross. It was a matter of common knowledge that a group of 
Acadians, driven from Annapolis Royal in the fall of 1755, came up 
the valley to Aylesford and encamped there for a month or so, then 
crossed the mountain to this place and encamped here until spring, 
when they went to Fort Cumberland. During the winter, many died. 



THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 109 

it is said, of fever and starvation, and were buried here. Later, their 
comrades erected the cross to mark their graves. I have seen the 
cross since 1815, dozens of times ; in 1820 it still stood, but after that 
year I was absent for several years, and when I came back it was 
gone. It stood close by the shore, on the extreme point, but the 
waves have washed the spot bare, and the place where it stood is now 
in a ledge of rocks, a few feet out from the shore ' '. On the 31st of 
August, 1887, we learn, another cross made by John Orpin, painted 
by George H. Fall, and lettered by Thomas Jones, was publicly 
erected as nearly as possible on the spot where the older cross stood. 
Mr. Orpin, the maker of the new cross, was at this time eighty-on(; 
years old. In his account we are told that the Aylesford Acadians 
who erected the cross came from Annapolis Royal ; in the newspaper 
account which here follows it is stated that they came from Minas ; 
which tradition is right we do not know. 

In the Halifax Herald of January 25, 1889, a writer whose name 
is unknown to us has given what he calls "a thrilling chapter of 
Nova Scotia history". His account of the "Black Winter Among the 
Acadians at French Cross" is so graphic that we reproduce it here 
entire. "As is well known", says the writer, "the southern shore of 
the Bay of Fundy is overlooked by a frowning, beetling cliff, extend- 
ing all the way from Cape Split to Digby Neck. Against this wall 
of solid trap, from time immemorial, the thundering waves, like bat- 
tering-rams, have hurled themselves in vain. At certain points, how- 
ever, there are breaks in this high bluff, making access to the Bay 
easy, and affording harbours for vessels. One of these places is found 
opposite the Aylesford St. Mary's Church. The ancients called it 
the 'French Cross', the moderns call it 'Morden'. 

"Long before either English or French speech was heard along 
the shores of the Bay of Fundy, the Micmacs had their highways of 
travel over land and water, as well established and as well known as 
are the railways, coach roads, and steamer routes, of the present day. 
The country around the head of the Bay, all the way from the 
Petitcodiac to Advocate, was favourite ground for the savages of 



110 KING'S COUNTY 

olden times. Equally desirable was the district along the banks of 
the Annapolis river. The abundance of fish, fowl, and wild beasts 
made these parts of the country desirable dwelling places for the red 
men. And there was necessarily much travelling from place to place. 
In choosing their highways the Indians, like the modern railway 
men, looked for routes securing the greatest possible advantage. 
From any point at the head of the Bay, outside of Minas Basin, 
canoes would soon glide across to French Cross. An easy portage of 
about four miles would bring them to the Annapolis river, near 
where St. Mary's Church in Aylesford now stands. Here the canoes 
would be launched, and down the river to Digby it was mere music 
and poetry to travel. The gentle current would bear them along 
the sinuosities of the river, where there were always mink, otter, 
beaver, rabbits, partridges, ducks and geese for their swift-winged 
arrows and their traps and snares ; and salmon and shad in plenty for 
their deft spears. High pleasure and glorious sport it was for the 
red men to drift down this stream, and not less was the fun to their 
papooses and squaws. Silently they would float along, surprising 
game at every turn of the stream. As soon as the French came into 
possession of the lands at Annapolis, and around the head of the 
Bay, and had made friends with the Micmacs, they naturally 
adopted the Indian routes by land and water. 

"In the early autumn of 1755 a canoe, well manned with 
Indians, might have been seen gliding up the Cornwallis river, and 
then being taken rapidly over the portage between Berwick and the 
Caribou bog. Here being again launched, it swept along the Anna- 
polis river, impelled both by the current and the Indians' paddles. 
Its occupants stopped neither to shoot fowl nor to spear fish. On 
and on they went till they arrived at the point a little above the 
Paradise railway station. Here they came upon the eastern end of 
the Acadian settlement. They were the bearers of startling news. 
Gloom was on their faces, and alarm in their actions and words. The 
intelligence they gave brought consternation to the hearts of the 
Acadians, for the latter now learned from their Micmac friends that 
their compatriots at Grand Pre and Canard were prisoners in the 



THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 111 

Grand Pre parish church, and surrounded by armed red coats ; and 
that ships were anchored at the mouth of the Gaspereau, ready to 
bear them away from their homes to lands strange and unknown, 

"The news flew down the river and over the marshes on the 
wings of the wind, and spread on either side till it reached the home 
of every habitant. The hearts of the people quailed before an. 
impending calamity so dire, a fate so terrible. In Upper Granville^ 
that is from below Bridgetown to Paradise, a meeting of the people 
was hastily called. Of course, the pressing, burning question was, 
what under the circumstances should be done. Already their 
priests and delegates were prisoners in Halifax, and they were face 
to face with the black sequel. Some said: 'Make no resistance,, 
surrender to the English and trust Providence'. Others said, 'Nay; 
of all evils before us this is the worst to choose ! ' The result was a. 
permanent division of opinion. About sixty resolved on instant 
flight up the river. But the risk was too great to travel either by 
stream, or by the old French road. In either course they might 
meet the English soldiers. Their route must be north of the river,, 
north of the road. 

"Loading themselves to the full measure of their burden 
bearing powers with provisions and camp life conveniences, they 
took a wailing farewell of their companions, who had resolved to 
remain, and started on their wearisome journey. Slowly and 
cautiously they moved up the country, till they came to a point about 
a mile east of Kingston railway station. There these fugitive men,^ 
women, and children encamped. Their Miemac friends acted as 
pickets and spies. On these sand dunes they heard from time to 
time of the progress of the deportation at Annapolis, Grand Pre 
and Cumberland. Their bread lasted bat a short time, and this 
forced them to a diet of berries, fish, and venison. Dysentery, com- 
mon at that season, broke out among them. Death began its work. Na 
priest was there to minister to the soul, no physician to care for 
the body. Fear aggravated the malady. With sad hearts they dug 
their friends' graves in the soft sands of the Aylesford plains. With 
an agony such as only these social, simple-hearted Acadians were 



112 KING'S COUNTY 

capable of, they buried their dead in these graves, and their wailings 
resounded among the trim, straight trunks of the ancient pines. 

"All Aylesford has heard of the 'French Burying Ground'. In 
it the money diggers have found bones, but no money. The mineral 
rods in the hands of the experts have pointed unerringly to the 
chest of gold. Digging must be done in the night. Spectres and 
ghosts were ever on guard, and at any moment might be encoun- 
tered. Again and again these supernatural visitors have appeared, 
striking terror into the hearts of the gold-seekers. More than once 
the crow-bar, thrust deep into the soft soil, has struck the iron 
chest containing the gold; but incautious lips have uttered some 
sudden exclamation, and away has gone the enchanted chest to 
another place, driven through the sand by the might of the presiding 
ghost. Baffled and chagrined by their own folly, the diggers have 
then gone home empty-handed, denouncing their impulsive comrade, 
and resolved to be more cautious the next time. Not a man of three 
score years in all Aylesford, but remembers these adventures of 
olden times. 

''The tragedy of the expulsion dragged its cruel length along 
through the autumn and into the early winter. The intelligence 
brought to the camp by the faithful Micmacs convinced the Acadians 
that they were so hemmed in by dangers that their safest course was 
to take the trail to French Cross and remain there until spring, and 
then cross the Bay and wander on to Quebec. This plan, desperate 
though it was, was executed. Under the shadow of the primeval 
forest, close by the shore, where a brook still empties itself into the 
waters of the Bay, about six miles from their camp in the valley 
they erected their rude winter huts. Before leaving the plains they 
bedewed "^ith tears the graves of their companions, and then wearily 
made their way over the level, wooded country, up the slopes of the j 
mountain, and down to the shore of the Bay. From the place 
chosen for their winter home they could see across to the opposite ii 
shore. The English vessels were continually passing up and down j; 
the Bay, and even should they get safely to the other side it would ii 
not be possible for them to go to Quebec, for not only grim forests, >i 



THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 113 

but deep snows would effectually bar their way. Until spring, there- 
fore, they must stay there as contentedly as they could. During all 
this bitter experience their Micmac friends stood faithfully by them. 
Though there were many moose and caribou in the woods it was not 
always easy to capture them, yet they managed to get a good deal of 
venison, and to vary their diet they found an almost inexhaustible 
quantity of mussels clinging to the rocks. 

''The winter passed slowly away. Above them, through the 
rigid, leafless branches of the giant forest, howled the storm. But 
around their huts were always the sympathetic spruce and fir trees, 
kindly and green. In December, they saw the last of the transports 
pass down the Bay, bearing away their compatriots to unknown 
shores. As they gazed upon them, appearing, passing, and disap- 
pearing in the west, borne on to shores and destiny all unknown, 
they envied them their lot. The last tidings brought them late in the 
autumn was that all the Acadian homes had been burned. No hope 
or shelter appeared in that direction, so there they remained, the 
winter through, in their huts by the sea. Disease dogged their steps, 
from the sand dunes to their cold camps on the shore. Death 
claimed more victims. The weak among them, both old and young, 
succumbed, and another cemetery was made. Close by the shore, 
opposite their camps, was an open space, green till covered by the 
snow. There they dug more graves for their fallen companions. 

"At length spring came. Indians helped them flay the birches 
and construct enough canoes to take the survivors to the New 
Brunswick shores. "When all was ready the fugitives loaded their 
canoes, wept over the graves of their dead, took a farewell look at 
their rude huts and the heaps of bones of moose, partridges, and 
caribou, and the shells of mussels, and committed themselves to the 
tender mercies of the Bay of Fundy, whose calms and storms they 
had watched through all that black winter. As the shore receded 
from their gaze their tear-dimmed eyes rested upon one object which 
stirred their deepest feelings. It was the wooden cross they had 
erected to protect the graves of their dead brothers, sisters, fathers, 
mothers, and children. No priest had been present to absolve the 



114 KING'S COUNTY 

dying or to say solemn service for the dead, but they left this symbol 
of their religion to hold their sepulchres sacred in the eyes of all 
who might visit the place in after years. 

"On the opposite side of the Bay they found some of their 
countrymen, vrho, like themselves, had endured the sufferings of 
camp life throughout that rigorous winter with Micmac friends. 
Patience, fortitude, and hope, characteristic of the Acadian, did not 
forsake them. They knew their homes were in ashes, but a blind 
belief possessed them that they should return to them, and again see 
in spring their green fields, bursting forests, and blossoming apple 
trees; again hear the sweet call of their church bells to mass and 
vespers ; and again around their bright fires, drink their cider, smoke 
their pipes, and enjoy life as they had done in bygone days". 

Aylesford Township officials appointed by the Court of Sessions 
October 16, 1812, were: Overseers of the Poor: James Harris, 
Nathan Randall, Jonathan Smith. Surveyors of Highways : James 
Harris, Nathan Randall, Nicholas Beckwith, George Orpin, Timothy 
Landrus, Sr. Assessors: Jonathan Smith, "William Parker, John 
Dugan. Pound Keeper: John Patterson. Constables: William 
Greaves, Samuel Van Buskirk. Hog Reaves: Matthew Reason, 
Moses Banks, Jonathan Smith, Richard NicoUs. Collector of Rates : 
James Patterson. Surveyors of Bricks: William Parker, William 
Randall. Surveyors of Lumber: Samuel Randall, Edward Morgan. 
Fence Viewers: Elias Graves, Francis Tupper, Joseph Spinney. 
Town Clerk: Robert Kerr. January 2, 1813, the Aylesford town 
meeting nominated Henry U. Van Buskirk, James and John Patter- 
son, Alexander Jaques, and Nathan and Samuel Randall, as trustees 
of schools for Aylesford. For the encouragement of a school a hun- 
dred and four pounds had recently been raised by general subscrip- 
tion, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel giving sixteen 
pounds, thirteen shillings and four pence, as its contribution to the 
fund. 



CHAPTEK YII 
THE TOWNSHIP OF PARRSBOROUGH 

Until 1840 the township of Parrsborough, in Cumberland coun- 
ty, was included in the County of King's. Like Aylesford, however^ 
it never had the privilege accorded to Cornwallis and Horton oX 
sending representatives to the legislature, and as in the case of 
Aylesford, we are not sure when it was formally established as- 
a township. "The township of Parrsborough", writes Haliburton 
in 1829, "was named after the late Governor Parr (the 12th Eng- 
lish governor of Nova Scotia), and though situated on the eastern 
side of the Bason of Minas, is appended to King's County. There 
is a small village bearing the name of the township nearly opposite 
the extreme point of the Cornwallis mountain, from whence the 
packets run to Horton and Windsor twice a week, and occasionally 
oftener. The distance between this place and Windsor is thirty- 
five miles. The village is overlooked by a bold bluff, two hundred 
and fifty feet high, called Partridge Island, which, resisting the 
tides of the Bay of Fundy, affords shelter in the summer months 
to vessels employed in this internal navigation. Near the junction 
of this township with Colchester, is a beautiful group of islands, 
five in number, and generally known as the Five Islands. They rise 
abruptly from the sea and present a very picturesque appearance. 
About two miles from the village is the Parish Church. From 
this place to Francklin Manor, the lands on both sides of the 
road to Cumberland were, in the year 1774, subdivided into farm 
lots and offered for sale at the rate of sixpence per acre, but at 
that period, such was the low estimation in which the country was 
held that not a single sale could be effected. In 1783 and at sub- 
sequent periods they were again divided into sixty farm lots of 
two hundred and fifty acres each, and were granted to such fam- 



116 KING'S COUNTY 

ilies as were inclined to accept of them. Besides this settlement 
there are several others in Parrsborough, that are in a thriving and 
prosperous condition. The inhabitants experience much inconven- 
ience from the intervention of the Bason of Minas, between Parrs- 
borough and Kentville, where the public offices are held". 

The original boundaries of King's, as we have seen, like those 
of Annapolis, Halifax, and Cumberland, were very wide, and even 
as late as 1784 what still remained to it of the country north of 
the Basin of Minas was increased by a tract extending from Cape 
Dore to Chignecto, northward, one boundary of which was "Franck- 
lin Manor", a large domain owned by the Hon. Michael Francklin, 
lieutenant-governor of the province from 1766 until probably 1776. 
The 27th of March, 1840, an act was passed by the legislature "to 
divide the township of Parrsborough, and to annex parts thereof 
to the counties of Colchester and Cumberland". The act reads: 
"Whereas great inconvenience is felt by the inhabitants of Parrs- 
borough in being annexed to the County of King's, as they are 
cut off from all connection with their county during the winter 
months, leaving them in a great measure without protection of 
law, for remedy thereof: Be it enacted by the Lieut. Governor, 
Council, and Assembly, that from and after the passing of this act, 
all that part of King's County lying on the north side of the 
Basin of Minas, and known as the Township of Parrsborough, shall 
be and the same is hereby annexed to the counties of Cumberland 
and Colchester, as follows : — ^All that part of the Township of Parrs- 
borough lying to the west of Harrington 's River in the Five Islands, 
to the county of Cumberland, and the remaining part of said Town- 
ship lying east of Harrington's River, aforesaid, to the County of 
Colchester". In a later part of the act it is specified that all Jus- 
tices of the Peace and other county officers then in office, should 
have the same power and authority while their commissions lasted, 
in the new counties as in the old. The portion of Parrsborough 
annexed to Cumberland was to remain, as it still is, a distinct and 
separate township of Cumberland. 

Within the limits of the original township of Parrsborough, 



THE TOWNSHIP OF PARRSBOROUGH 117 

no doubt a considerable number of Acadian French had their 
homes. About ten years after the removal of the French the gov- 
ernment began to, grant land in Parrsborough as it had earlier done 
in Cornwallis and Horton, to English speaking settlers, one of the 
earliest grants, it is said, being 2,000 acres,— half to John Avery, 
and a quarter each to John Bacon, Jr. and Jacob Lockhart. The 
first of these early grantees, by deed bearing date April 8, 1777, 
transferred his land to Asa and Abijah Scott of Fort Sackville, 
in Halifax County, and Jacob Hurd. In time the ownership of the 
Scotts in this Parrsborough land passed to James Ratchford, who 
gave for it the not excessive sum of five hundred and fifty pounds. 
A grant that may perhaps be even slightly earlier than this, has 
the date of April 28, 1763. The amount comprised in this latter 
tract was also 2,000 acres, and the grantees were, Abel and Michael 
Michener, Matthew Shepherd, and William and George Forbes. 
The land thus granted is said to be ''at Advocate Harbour, near 
Cape Dore, in the County of King's". Another grant, dating from 
1784, was 587 acres to Rev. Thomas Shreve. This was "on the 
east side of the road leading from Partridge Island towards Cum- 
berland, and east side Chignecto River in King's". A large grant 
of 8,900 acres was made, under the seal of Governor Parr, October 
15, 1784, to Thomas Pottinson, Lieut. Francis Fraser, Capt. Joseph 
Yought, Christopher Vought, Thomas Yelverton, Ensign Francis 
Finney, Lieut. Thomas J. Pritchard, Capt. Samuel Lindsay, Lieut. 
John Wightman, Capt. John Hetfield, Adjutant Alexander Clark, 
Capt. Alexander McDonald, Capt. James Raymond, and Lieut. 
Eleazer Taylor. 

As will at once be imagined, these grantees were chiefly, per- 
haps indeed all, officers who had fought in the American Revolu- 
tion on the losing side. Another grant was to Thomas Parr, Es- 
quire, John Parr, Jr., "William Parr, and Harriet Parr, "in severalty 
nnto each of them and unto each and every of their several and 
respective heirs and assigns". The grant comprised "several 
plantations of land comprehended within a tract of 2,800 acres, 
situate and being within the Township of Parrsborough", Thomas 



118 KING'S COUNTY 

Parr receiving Lot no. 57, John Parr, Jr. Lot 58, William Parr 
Lot 59, Harriet Parr Lot 60. Each of the lots contained seven hun- 
dred acres, and the "consideration" given was two shillings for 
every hundred acres. The grant bears date August 8, 1795. The 
same date, Governor Parr granted 21,380 acres to a large number 
of men, most of whom were Loyalist Refugees, new to the province, 
one or two, however, being men who had previously lived in other 
townships of King's. The names on this grant are: Liep.t. Col. 
Elisha Lawrence, Major Isaac Kipp, Lieut. John Reid, Capt. John 
Longstreet, Lieut. Adolphus French, Quartermaster John Nowlan, 
Sarah Bessionet, Capt. Edmund Ward, Lieut. Elijah Fowler, Lieut. 
Asher Dunham, Letitia Barnston, Lieut. Robert Spicer, William 
Taylor, Esq., Lieut. Patrick Henry, Richard Walker, Esq., Lieut. 
Moses Ward, Capt. James Stewart, Rebecca Cloud, Capt. Finley 
Brown, Lieut. John Monroe, Lieut. Luther Hathaway, Major John 
Vandyke, Capt. Samuel Wilson, Lieut. Thomas Loudon, John 
Bowsley, Charles Bowsley, Edmund Butler, Lieut. William Reid, 
James Ratchford, Thomas Moore, James Mitchell, Thomas Harriott, 
William Dumaine, Col. Edward Cole, John Smith, William 
Thompson. 

It is recorded in the Crown Land Office that the rights of John 
Longstreet, Adolphus French, Sarah Bessionet, Letitia Barnston, 
William Taylor, Richard Walker, Moses Ward, Thomas Loudon, 
John Bowsley, and Charles Bowsley, were excheated May 14, 1814. 
How many of the others of these grantees actually settled on their 
lands we do not know. A few, however, were later conspicuously 
identified with the history of the township, notably Col. Elisha 
Lawrence, James Ratchford, and Thomas William Moore. 

In a grant bearing date August 18, 1785, many Scotch names 
occur. The list is as follows: John Campbell, Donald McKay, 
Thomas Smith, John McPherson, Alexander McLean, John McGil- 
veroy, Lieut. Robert Clarke, Peter Rogers, James Dick, John 
Mathieson, John Irwin, Robert Buchan, Angus McLeod, Thomas 
Martin, Andrew Anderson, Michael Wilson, John Carry, William 
McKegan, John Jardine, John McMillan, Timothy Hammond, John 



THE TOWNSHIP OF PARRSBOROUGH 119 

McLeod, John Cunningham, Patrick Murphy, Daniel Campbell, 
Alexander McDonald, William Cummins, Peter Morrison, Charles 
McLoughlin, David Young, Charles McKinnon, Norman McKenzie, 
Neil McLean, James Smith, Jonathan Crow, Henry St. Clair, Peter 
Nicholson, William Campbell, Charles McGregor, Donald Mclver, 
and several others. The antecedents of these men we do not know, 
but William Campbell is probably the William Campbell who was 
appointed a Justice of the Peace in King's County a few years after 
the date of this grant, and it is probably he who as early as 1814 
was Judge of Probate for the county and was living in Cornwallis. 
The 6th of April, 1814, another grant in Parrsborough, consisting 
of 1,700 acres, was given to James Noble Shannon, Esq., James 
Noble Shannon, Jr., Elijah Kenwood, and Silas H. Crane. The 
number of acres to each of the first three of these men was five 
hundred, to Silas H. Crane the number was but two hundred. 
Among others who received grants from Governor Parr, were Lieut. 
John Connolly, who received 1,000 acres, and Capt. D. Meyern, who 
received 700. The first of these grants bears date July 21, 1785, the 
second, June 7, 1787. 

At a meeting of the Executive Council in Halifax, July 20, 1786, 
a memorial was presented from Lt.-Col. Elisha Lawrence, "in be- 
half of the inhabitants of Parrsborough, requesting that part of 
the township be erected into a parish, whereon it was resolved that 
the following tract be for that purpose. Beginning at Swan Cove, 
about two miles to the eastward of Chignecto River, thence to 
run north ten miles, then westerly to Parrsborough, and then 
bounded on the north and west by said Parrsborough, and on the 
south by Minas Gut and Basin, comprehending the public land on 
the east side of Chignecto River and all the lots on both sides 
the road leading from thence to Francklin Manor". At a meet- 
ing of the Council, December 21, 1786, it was resolved that the 
Parish of Parrsborough should be limited and bounded as above. 

June 18, 1798, the inhabitants of the township of Parrsborough 
assembled ''to choose persons to receive voluntary contributions for 
the support of the King's Government and for carrying on the 



120 KING'S COUNTY 

present just and necessary war". The persons chosen were: Capt, 
James Eatchford, Capt. Samuel Wilson, and Eleazer Taylor, Esq. 
The people who subscribed were: Rev. Thomas Shreve, Samuel 
"Wilson, John Smith, James Noble Shannon, Eleazer Taylor, "Will- 
iam Skidmore, Jesse Lewis, Charles Eraser, William Conroy, Fran- 
cis Phinney, James Ratchf ord, Jonathan Vickery, Jonathan Vickery, 
Jr., Mary Crane, widow; James Jinks, Jr., William Teate, John 
Vickery, Andrew Thompson, Jonathan Davison, Denis Lefurfy, 
Robert Kerr, Walter Shey, James Fordyce, Thomas William Moore, 
F. York, James Holt, John Fordyce, Nicholas Willigar. Shortly 
after the raising of these loyal contributions, August 1, 1798, Nel- 
son defeated the French in the Battle of the Nile. At this event 
there was great rejoicing in Nova Scotia; in Halifax salutes were 
fired and the town was illuminated; in Lunenburg a similar dem- 
onstration was made. 

A name that occurs often in the records of Parrsborough, and 
that has had one previous mention in this history, is that of James 
Noble Shannon, who was long the leading merchant of Partridge 
Island, where he had his store and his house. Mr. Shannon, who 
was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in September, 1751, was 
one of the five sons of Cutt or Cutts Shannon, a leading lawyer of 
Portsmouth, and his wife Mary, daughter of Lt. Governor George 
Vaughn, his great grandfather being being a brother, it is said, 
of Sir William Shannon, once Mayor of the city of Dublin. James 
Noble, who was named for an uncle by marriage, James Noble 
of Boston, was brought up in Boston and educated there. When 
he reached manhood he went into the lumber business in Machias, 
Maine, but at the outbreak of the Revolution he removed to Horton, 
King's County, where he married Chloe, born Sept. 24, 1745, elder 
daughter of Silas and Lucy (Waterman) Crane, formerly of Con- 
necticut, a sister of Col. Jonathan Crane, long one of Horton 's most 
prominent men. Settling finally in Parrsborough, where as we 
have seen, together with his brother-in-law, Silas H. Crane, he 
received a grant of land in 1814, he soon built up an important 
business, his partner in which, after a while, was Mr. James Ratch- 



THE TOWNSHIP OF PARRSBOROUGH 121 

ford, a young Cornwallis man. Mr. Shannon had no children, so 
he adopted a nephew, James Noble Shannon, father of the late 
Hon. Judge Samuel Leonard Shannon, of the Nova Scotia Su- 
preme Bench. James Noble Shannon died at Parrsborough, Nov. 
7, 1822, and is buried in a picturesque spot in sight of Minas Basin. 
It is recorded that in June, 1780, the lieutenant of a privateer from 
Machias, with seven other men landed at Partridge Island and be- 
gan to rob Mr. Shannon's store. Lieutenant Wheaton was in charge 
of a small force of regulars, who were stationed at the block house 
on Block-House Hill, and with five of his men he routed the enemy, 
killing the Machias lieutenant and two of his men, and making 
prisoners of the rest. 

A sketch of the Ratchford family will be found in the Family 
Sketches in this book. "The history of Parrsborough", a news- 
paper writer says, "was for half a century and more the history of 
the Ratchford family. There was a time when the half-pay offi- 
cers, whose descendants formed the bulk of Parrsborough 's popu- 
lation, were wont to fire a cannon when anything in particular 
happened to a Ratchford". A sketch of the King's County Moore 
family, originating in Parrsborough with the Loyalist Thomas "Will- 
iam Moore, will also be found in the Family Sketches in this book. 

In 1797, Theophrastus ' Almanac announces for the information 
of travellers between Windsor and Parrsborough, that "the Parrs- 
borough packet sails regularly between "Windsor and Parrsborough 
twice in every week, and occasionally three times, but is always at 
Windsor every Tuesday in the summer season (wind and weather 
permitting), so as to sail from thence to Parrsborough the first high 
water that happens at or after twelve o'clock of that day. The 
passage money for each person is five shillings and sixpence per 
head. The vessel is forty-two tons burthen and has good accom- 
modations for passengers ; and likewise for taking over horses, neat 
cattle, and sheep, etc". In a similar advertisement in some other 
almanac in 1803, the passage money for each person is stated to be 
five shillings, and the freight for horses and cattle seven and six- 
pence a head. 



122 KING'S COUNTY 

The census of Parrsborough in 1822 is said to have given the 
town 223 families, comprising 336 men, 293 women, 368 boys, and 
290 girls, in all 1,287 persons. April 19,1884, an act was passed by 
the legislature to incorporate Parrsborough town. 



CHAPTEK VIII 
KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 

For some years after the New England planters came to the 
county the social and business centre of the township of Horton was 
the Horton Town Plot. As late as 1800, however, near this centre 
there were only about twenty houses and one or two stores, though 
some of the leading families of the township from the first had 
resided there. From the earliest settlement, what is now "Wolfville 
had a considerable number of houses, and by the beginning of the 
19th century a few more had been added. As the population of 
Horton multiplied west, and as the business increased, Wolfville 
became more important than the "Lower Horton'' village, but by 
the end of the first quarter of the century, a more important hamlet 
still was Kentville, the present shire town. The hamlet was first 
known as "Horton Corner", and Sept. 16, 1766, the first deed of 
land, it is said, was given there by Jonathan Darrow, to James Fillis 
and Joseph Pierce. If this is true, Jonathan Darrow 's grant o^" five 
hundred acres, given Feb. 19, 1766, may very well have included 
part, at least, of the site of the present Kentville town. Nor is it at 
all unlikely that the house James Fillis erected on his land purchased 
from Darrow, was the first permanent dwelling erected in what is 
now the centre of the town. 

About 1798 a Loyalist, Henry Magee, who had received land in 
Aylesford in 1786, built a grist mill on the Kentville brook, probably 
on the exact site of the mill afterwards owned by Mr, William 
Redden. Magee built also a house, which was later owned by the 
Allisons, and at some point near opened a shop for general trade. 

In 1800, Horton Corner comprised fourteen houses and Magee 's 
store. About 1812 Sheriff George Chipman built the house that was 
afterwards for a long time the home of Mr. James Edward DeWolfe 



124 KING'S COUNTY 

and his family, and some distance further up the main street Patrick 
Fuller opened a general store. When the first bridge over the Kent- 
ville brook was constructed we do not know, but there must have 
been a rough one made very soon after the New England planters 
came to Horton. 

In June, 1794, his Royal Highness Prince Edward, Duke of 
Kent, then commanding on the North American Station and residing 
at Halifax, made a journey on horseback through the valley, from 
Annapolis Royal going by vessel to St. John, New Brunswick. 
At that time Wolfville was the leading place in Horton, and 
Prince Edward was entertained there at the house of Judge Elisha 
DeWolf. The visit of this illustrious person to the county was never 
forgotten by the Horton people, and thirty-two years later, in 1826, 
at a meeting of the principal inhabitants of Horton Corner, tlie name 
*'Kentville" was given to the budding town. In the Nova Scotian 
newspaper of April 19, 1826, is the following notice of this change : 
*'The inhabitants of Horton Corner having lately held a public 
meeting, at which George Chipman, Esq., presided, have resolved 
that their growing village should in the future be called Kentville, in 
honour of His late Royal Highness, the Duke of Kent, one of the earli- 
est and best friends of Nova Scotia. They have it in intention to I'rect 
a public school-house, with sufficient room for the introduction of the 
Madras system, as well as for a Grammar School; and as a further 
proof of the spirit of improvement which animates them, they have 
it likewise in contemplation to establish a public library". Three 
years later the court-house and jail were planted at Kentville, and 
thenceforth all the chief county business was transacted there. 

The first court-house and jail were, of course, situated at Horton 
town, near the present Horton landing, but probably very early in 
the 19th century these buildings were burned, and for some years 
the courts were held in the Baptist Meeting-House at Wolfville. For 
a jail presumably some neighboring dwelling house was used. In 
1784 the township of Aylesford became more settled, and for the 
inhabitants of that region, Wolfville, as the seat of the county offices 
and as a place for holding the courts was, of course, inconveniently 



KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 125 

far to the east. It was not until 1829, however, as we have said, 
that a court-house and jail were built at Kentville. In that year a 
two-story structure, containing both court-house and jail was built, 
its location being perhaps on the present railway track, or a little 
to the north of that, on Cornwallis Street. In 1849 this double 
building was burned, but in the record of the acts of legislature 
for that year we learn that it had an insurance on it of five hundred 
pounds. To this amount the legislature added five hundred more, 
and immediately two separate buildings were put up, which did duty 
until 1903. In that year, a red brick Municipal Building, including 
a court-house, was built, the first use of the court-house being by the 
Municipal Council at its meeting in January, 1904. At the present 
time, however, the court-house of 1850 still stands. In 1907 a new, 
larger jail was erected, the old one having long been inadequate to 
the county's needs. 

''Kentville owes its location", says a recent writer, "to the 
enormous sand bank (removed about twenty-five years ago), which 
here narrowed the river and made a convenient place for a ford at 
low tide, and later for a bridge. Thus, naturally, a village sprang up 
here. The two main streets of the present town, Main and Corn- 
wallis Streets, as we have already seen, were roads made by the 
Acadian French, but the two streets that complete the Kentville 
' ' Square ' ', the streets called Church Street and Webster Street, were 
laid out by Dr. William Bennett Webster, probably the most enter- 
prising and far-seeing man the village in its early history had. It is 
said that when Dr. Webster extended the road now Church Street 
over the steep sand bank we have referred to, he received from the 
people of the town generally little praise and much ridicule, but the 
present usefulness of the road is a complete justification of his wise 
foresight. 

In the first two decades of the 19th century the following were 
the chief houses in and near the present town. On the "Roy farm", 
between Kentville and New Minas, which was originally the grant 
of Eli Perkins, stood the Perkins grantee house. Half a mile to tlie 
west, on the high road, stood the Benjamin Peck House, afterward 



126 KING'S COUNTY 

enlarged or completely rebuilt, by Capt. Joseph Barss, who married 
Olivia, daughter of Judge Elisha DeWolf. A few rods further west 
still, on a knoll from which a charming view of the dykes could be 
had, stood the grantee house of Benjamin Peck's younger brother, 
Cyrus Peck. The next house westward, standing almost but not 
quite on the site of the large building later erected by Mr. William 
Redden and known as the "Riviere House", was owned by Moses 
Stevens, who finally removed to Gaspereau. On the site of the 
Colonial house, built about 1840 by Mr. Caleb Handley Rand and 
now owned by Col. Wentworth Eaton Roscoe, stood the house owned 
and first occupied by Henry Magee, in which at that time liv(?d Mrs. 
Joseph Allison. In a small house on the south side of the road, after- 
ward bought and added to by Hon. James Delap Harris, for years his 
residence, and after he moved across the road to the "Wbidden 
House" the home of his son, William Harris, Q. C, lived Robert 
Westcott, a blacksmith. In the house inherited by Deaconess Alice 
E. Webster from her father, the late Mr. Henry Bentley Webster, 
lived Dr. Isaac Webster, Kentville's first physician. About four 
rods back of the "Red Store" diagonally, stood a gambrel -roofed 
house, probably first owned by James Fillis, and it would seem kept 
by him as an inn. In that house, at the period of which we write, 
lived Mrs. Dennis Angus, a widow, whose husband had once been 
High Sheriff of Halifax County. Almost on the site of the house 
which Mr. Benjamin H. Calkin afterward owned, stood the old Pitch 
or Bragg or Denison house, with a blacksmith shop near. In 3813 
the house was occupied by Mr. Handley Chipman. Next came Mr. 
Silas Masters' house, a little above the present Baptist Church, for 
many years now the property of his son, Mr. Charles Masters. In a 
log house where Mr. Herbert Denison 's house stands lived Thomas 
and Samuel Tupper. Of these men, Thomas later moved to Ayles- 
ford, and Samuel to Cold Brook, to a farm in recent times owned by 
Thomas Griffin. Their home and farm in Kentville the Tuppers 
sold to Major Timothy Barnaby, who later re-sold it to Mr. Samuel 
Denison. The "Coloned Moore place" had previously been owned 
by Col. Henry Gesner of Cornwallis, but from him had passed to 



KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 127 

James Prentice Harris, the latter selling it to Col. Moore, who there- 
after occupied it. 

On the place once owned by Mr. Charles Smith, now in the pos- 
session of Frederick Mitchell, lived George Harrington, father of 
William and Robert Harrington. At Cold Brook was what is known 
as the "Davidson Place", now the property of Mr. Peter Innes, but 
who occupied it at the period in question no one remembers. In 1812 
Patrick Fuller purchased a building already standing, which as we 
have said, he opened as a store, the location of it being near the 
eastern corner of Main and Church Streets. This store occupied 
almost, if not quite, the site of the small cottage afterward known 
as the ''DeWolf House", which stood a little to the west of the 
James Neary house. Close beside it, probably to the east, stood 
another store, kept by William Hunt. This gentleman who married 
Jane, daughter of John Barnaby and his wife Rebecca (Chipman),^ 
and niece of Hon. Samuel Chipman, while he was in Kentviiia 
studied medicine with Dr. Robert Bayard, and when he had obtained 
his profession removed to St. John, New Brunswick, and practised 
there. Before he left Kentville he built the house in the grove 
afterward owned and occupied by Dr. William Bennett Webster, 
Some time after 1813 Dr. Isaac Webster removed the Fillis house and 
built in its stead a Masonic Hall, half of which, however, was never 
roofed in. This hall, which was the first public hall erected in Kent- 
ville, was after three or four years taken down. It stood almost if 
not quite on the site of the Bragg Inn, this site being later occupied 
by the ''Victoria House". At this time George Chipman was High 
Sheriff, and he of course lived in the house he had recently built. 
Until 1812, or thereabouts, when he built his new house, Sherilr 
Chipman lived in the jail building ; after he moved from that build- 
ing his brother Charles, who was then Deputy Sheriff, resided there 
instead. At some period during Dr. Robert Bayard's residence in 
Kentville he built the house that Mr. Stephen Harrington Moore, 
Q. C, afterward for many years owned and occupied, and where he 
died. Exactly how many years Dr. Bayard lived in the house we da 
not know. 



128 KING'S COUNTY 

A probably complete list of the residents of the village and its 
suburbs in 1825 is the following: Beginning east, on the "Leander 
Bishop Hill", in the long, low (probably grantee) house, which for 
many years stood there, lived a shoemaker named Hopkins, an 
Irishman, he being succeeded by another Irishman named Mitchell. 
In the Eli Perkins house lived an estimable Scotchman, Mr. George 
Eoy. On the Elderkin Farm lived the mother of Silas Elderkin, by 
her second marriage the mother also of James Burbidge. In the 
Benjamin Peck house lived Capt. Joseph Barss. In the Cyrus Peck 
house lived Mr. Peck's widow. In the house afterward owned by 
Hon. Thomas Lewis Dodge, and still owned by his family, lived the 
builder of the house, Mr. George Terry. In a house which stood on 
the site of the later built "Riviere House", lived a Mr. Benjamin, a 
miller. The house, however, and the grist mill which had been 
owned by Henry Magee, and Magee's dwelling, were all owned by 
Moses Stevens, who later married Cyrus Peck's widow. In the 
Magee house lived Mrs. Joseph Allison, her husband then being 
dead. Later Mrs. Allison occupied half the house, her son Leonard 
occupying the other half. In the house he had built lived Sheriff 
George Chipman. In the house later owned by Hon. James Delap 
Harris, lived Eobert Westcott. Where the late Mr. Benjamin H. 
Calkin's first dwelling stood, was the Samuel Dennison house, then 
occupied by Samuel Dennison 's daughter, Mrs. Carr, and by one or 
two other families. In the "James Neary house" lived the owner, 
Mr. James Denison, a cousin of Samuel Denison, whose sister 
Lavinia he had married. In the house afterward owned by Dr. 
William Bennett Webster, lived William Hunt, who, as we have 
said, built the house. In the house he had built lived the then owner 
Dr. Robert Bayard. 

Where Mr. Winckworth Chipman afterward lived, lived John 
Terry, who had brothers, George, Ephraim, Elkanah, etc. In the 
next house west, lived Silas Masters, whose wife was a sister o" 
Caleb Handley Rand. Where the house built by the late Judge 
George A. Blanchard stands, stood a house occupied by Elijah 
Phinney. Where Herbert Denison lives, lived the present owner's 



KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 129 

grandfather, Samuel Denison, St., whose wife was Polly Gallup. In 
the next house beyond lived Col, William Charles Moore. On the 
place afterward owned by Charles Smith, lived George Harrington. 
On Cornwallis Street, in the jail building, lived Charles Chipman, 
The chief men of Kentville were Col. Moore, Dr. Bayard, Dr. Isaac 
Webster, Sheriff Chipman, James and Samuel Denison, and the two 
early successful Kentville merchants, James Delap Harris and Caleb 
Handley Eand. Of these men, the Denisons alone had been born in 
Horton ; Dr. Bayard, a son of Col. Samuel Vetch Bayard, had come 
to Kentville from "VYilmot ; Col. Moore and his family, who lived first 
in Parrsborough, in 1813 had moved from the "lower end of Saxon 
Street", Cornwallis, to the Horton village; Sheriff Chipman, Dr. 
Isaac Webster, and Messrs. Harris and Rand, had also previously 
lived in Cornwallis. 

From reminiscences of the late James Ratchford, DeWolf, M. D.. 
of Halifax, we learn that in or about 1830, the stores in Kentville 
were James Edward DeWolf 's, Daniel Moore's, James Delap Harris', 
and Caleb Handley Rand's, all of course general stores. The physi- 
cians were Drs. Isaac Webster and E. F. Harding, the latter 
of whom had come to Kentville from Windsor. The barristers were 
Stephen Harrington Moore, John Clarke Hall, Henry Bentley Web- 
ster, John Whidden (for many years Clerk of the House of 
Assembly), and William Harris, ''all professional men of good, 
standing and a credit to the bar". The most attractive houses were 
those of Sheriff Campbell, who had succeeded Sheriff Chipman; 
Caleb Handley Rand, John Whidden, ' ' whose Italian villa was af tei - 
ward the home of Hon. James Delap Harris"; Dr. William Bennett 
Webster, and Henry Bentley Webster, ''whose houses were fronted 
by groves of shady maples"; and Stephen Harrington Moore, who 
then owned the Dr. Robert Bayard house. At the extreme west of 
the town lived Col. William Charles Moore, and at the extreme east 
Mrs. Joseph Barss. 

In the Almanac for 1803, between Windsor, in Hants County, 
and -the eastern boundary of Aylesford, we find the following 
'"houses of entertainment" or inns: At Windsor, Andrews and 



130 KING'S COUNTY 

Halls; at Falmouth Ferry, Smith's; at Halifax River, Frame's; then 
in succession: Bishop's; DeWolf's; Fillis'; Willoughby Farm; 
Calkin's; and Marshall's, the distance between Andrews and Hall's 
and Marshall's being given as thirty miles. At some later time, but 
just when we do not know, Cyrus Peck opened his grantee house as 
an inn. Mr. Peck was one of two brothers, of the well known Peck 
family of Lyme, Connecticut, both brothers having places in what 
is now the eastern end of Kentville. His first wife was Mary Eng- 
lish, daughter of the widowed Cornwallis grantee, Mrs. Abigail 
English, and a sister of Mrs. Samuel Willoughby. Mrs. Peck died in 
1808, but her husband soon married again, and until his death in 
1812 continued to keep the inn. For a while after his death the 
house still remained open to strangers, but Angus', farther west, 
near the corner where the Red Store is, and Bragg 's still farther 
west, shared the honours with it. Finally, largely it is said through 
the enterprise of the merchant, Caleb Handley Rand, the ' ' Kentville 
Hotel" was built, and the other inns went out of existence. On the 
site of Mr. Peck 's house, which as an inn was known as the ' ' Royal 
Oak", stands now the handsome residence of Mayor Harry Hamm 
Wickwire. The old house was reached from the post road by a pic- 
turesque flight of wooden steps, at the top shaded on one side by a 
magnificent oak, on the other by a large willow. The house itself^ 
which Mr. Peck at some time after he built it must considerably 
have enlarged, was destroyed by fire in 1881. Shortly after this Mr. 
"Wickwire purchased the hill on which it stood and there erected 
his house. In 1904 Mr. Frederick Wickwire bought the property 
of which the hill was originally a part, and built the house in which 
he lives. Precisely how early a stage-coach line was established 
between Halifax and Kentville we do not know, but in 1829, it is 
said, Mr. John Whidden was instruraental in having the stage line 
extended from Kentville westward to Annapolis Royal. Until the 
stage-coach was supplanted by the railroad in 1869 the Kentville 
Hotel was the headquarters of stage travel between Halifax and 
Annapolis. Back of it, fronting on the Kentville brook, were the 
great stables, in which the coach horses were stalled and baited, and 



KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 131 

■whence they were taken every day in summer to the brook for a 
swim in the "deep hole". 

The first Kentville school-house stood almost opposite the jail^ 
near what was later the entrance to the Lydiard place. It was 
erected probably between 1826 and 1829, and was a very small 
building. Long after the second school-house was built it was moved 
to the northeast corner of Main and Church Streets, a little to the 
west of the "DeWolf house", where it finally became a cobbler's 
shop or a residence for very poor people. The second school-house 
was also built on Cornwallis Street, but on the site of what is now 
Mr. James Seeley's store, in ''Lovett Block". This building stood 
until the present school-house was built on Academy Hill. To erect 
the first school-house a company, composed of the leading men of 
the village, was formed, and the subscriptions they made were sup- 
plemented by a small grant from the government. In the very first 
years of the use of this school-house it is said that men taught there 
named Masters, Fisher, and Noble, after them coming in succession, 
Charles Chipman, a Mr. McSweeney, and a Mr. Hall. Between 1825 
and 1831, Andrew Black, a Scotchman and Presbyterian, taught 
there ''an excellent school". Exactly how long his incumbency 
lasted we do not know, but he died at the Elderkin place, where he 
had a home with Mr. John Terry, shortly before 1831. At his 
funeral the school children walked in procession, the little girls 
dressed in white. Under his instruction, came most of the Kent- 
ville boys of the time, among these "William and Charles Whidden, 
John Chaloner Chipman, Eobert and "William Bayard (sons of Dr. 
Robert Bayard), William Harris, and George Masters. Not only 
Horton boys but many Cornwallis boys came to his school. Mr. 
Black's immediate successor was Mr. Samuel Kirkpatrick, a very 
estimable man, born in Antrim, Ireland, of North of Ireland Scotcfe 
parentage, who in his youth had studied for the Presbyterian min- 
istry. Early renouncing the Calvinistic creed, he taught school for a 
while in his native land, but in 1812 came to America. A little earlier 
than this his father had emigrated to Pennsylvania, leaving his 
family behind him. When the wife with her children sailed to join 



132 KING'S COUNTY. 

her husband, the ship on which the family had taken passage was 
seized by an English privateer and brought to Halifax. For a while 
Samuel Kirkpatriek taught school in Newport, Hants county, then 
for some years he was master of the Kentville school. Like his pre- 
decessor he boarded at or lived in the Elderkin house, east of ths 
village. After him, for a short time, came a Mr. Desmond, an Eng- 
lishman, who with his friend Alexander Tremaise had come to 
King's county shortly before. Desmond did not teach long, but 
gave way to Mr. Thomas Hardy, a Scotchman, who taught in Kent- 
ville for twelve years. Mr. Hardy's daughter Jessie, became the 
second wife of Hon. Samuel Chipman. 

The next teacher was Mr. Robert Brine, of a Newfoundland 
family, who had just graduated at King's College, Windsor, and 
was studying for Orders. He taught in Kentville for three or four 
years and his ordination to the diaconate occurred during that 
time. He married Miss Rose Wollenhaupt, a sister of Mrs. John 
Blanchard, and after he left Kentville for many years had parishes 
in the diocese. From May, 1847, until the spring of 1854, the teacher 
of the school was William Eaton, second son of Ward Eaton, Esq., of 
'Cornwallis, who after his retirement from teaching settled per- 
manently in Kentville. Mr. Eaton was appointed a Commissioner 
in the Supreme Court of the Province, under the new school act 
became the second Inspector of Schools for the county, and finally 
on the incorporation of Kentville, the shire town's first Treasurer 
and Clerk. Following him as teacher, came John R. Miller, and 
next Dr. Stephen Dodge, who married Florence, second daughter of 
Judge George Augustus Blanchard, and later till his death (Feb. 3, 
1899) practised medicine in Halifax. 

Dr. Dodge's successor was John Moser, a native of Lunenburg 
county, and a graduate of Acadia, after whom came the Rev. 
Alexander Romans, a clergyman of the Free Church of Scotland, 
brother of Robert Romans of Halifax, who before coming to Kent- 
ville had been Professor of Classics in Dalhousie College. After 
teaching for a certain length of time in the old Kentville school- 
house, about 1860 Mr. Romans withdrew from the school and 



KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 133 

founded a separate grammar school, to which a considerable number 
of the best pupils in the town, both boys and girls, went. His new 
school he kept in what was known as " Redden 's Hall", on the Mill 
Brook road, the town school-house being occupied by David Stuart 
Hamilton, B. A., an accomplished teacher, a graduate of King's 
College of the Class of 1847, who on the 5th of August, 1863, married 
Mrs. Josephine Collins (Hamilton), widow of John Rufus Eaton, and 
went to New York City to live. At King's College Mr. Hamilton had 
studied with Orders in view, and finally, in the diocese of Alabama he 
was admitted to the Diaconate of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 
Before long, however, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, he died. From a 
now extinct college in the South, at some time in his career in the 
United States he was created a Doctor of Civil Law. After Mr. 
Hamilton, in 1863, came Bernard Farrell, and then Junia D. 
Sprague. 

For many years there were schools in the village exclusively 
for girls or for little children. While Mr. Kirkpatrick was master of 
the grammar school, Miss Rachel Martin, an aunt of William Leg- 
gett, a local poet of Sussex Vale, New Brunswick, herself possessing 
some poetical gift, kept a rather notable school for girls. She 
taught first in Bragg 's Inn, then in a cottage afterward owned by 
Mr. Winckworth Chipman, where she also lived. Most of the young 
ladies of the village, the Misses Isabel Morton (afterward Mrs. 
Wishart), Amelia Allison, Elizabeth Whidden, Susan and Minetta 
Hamilton, Maria Bishop (Mrs. Edward Young), Julia Dennison 
(the first Mrs. Benjamin H. Calkin), Sarah Bragg (Mrs. Eaton Rock- 
well), Eliza Dennison, Mary Carr, and others, were her pupils, 
Before she left New Brunswick, Miss Martin had taught Latin to 
boys in St. John, and in Kentville she had also a small class of boys. 
When she left Nova Scotia, she went to Fredericton, New Bruns- 
wick, and there taught Latin and singing, and for a long time her- 
self sang in the Anglican Church choir. She was a well bred woman 
and had much influence on the minds and manners of the Kentville 
young women. A strict churchwoman, she always opened her school 
with collects from the Prayer-Book and with the hymn ''Awake my 



134 KING'S COUNTY 

soul and with the sun". In the afternoon she closed it with the 
hymn "Glory to Thee my God this night". She had the floor of her 
school room chalked and her pupils were literally obliged to "toe 
the mark". She has been described as wearing a black beaver bon- 
net lined with pink satin, with long handsome plumes, and a veil 
with sprigs. A story is told of Miss Martin, relative to her poetical 
gifts, that one winter morning she opened her school room and 
finding no fire in it went across the road to Mr. James Denison's to 
ask for some wood. At the Denisons' she found the handsome Miss 
Maria Haliburton of Windsor, a cousin of Judge Thomas Chandler 
Haliburton, who had long wanted to meet "the clever poetess". 
Returning to her school she wrote rapidly : 

"Is it winter, said I, for the v/ind keenly blows. 

Then what means the fine bloom of this beautiful rose ? 

As I entered the room and had vision of thee, 

Fair stranger, thought I, here's a subject for me; 

If the critical gaze of the cold temale eye 

Can that soul-kindling glance without feeling descry, 

If female the beauty of female can see, 

Glow with rapture my fancy here 's business for thee ! 

Then beautiful stranger there is no mistake. 

If I were not a poetess one you could make, 

That visage of sweetness, that soft summer smile, 

"Would melt the stern soul to smooth numbers like oil". 

Miss Martin's residence in Kentville was probably due to the 
fact that she was a first cousin once removed of James Denison, her 
mother Abigail Denison (daughter of David Sherman Denison), born 
in 1753, having been married to Dr. John Martin, who is said to 
have been a chaplain in the British army. The author of the Deni- 
son Genealogy, says that Miss Rachel Martin and her sister Mary 
(who was married to William N. Leggett) were for some time 
teachers iil New York City. Rachel Martin, the writer adds, in her 
old age went to England and was presented to her Majesty, the late 



KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 135 

Queen Victoria, who kindly settled on her a pension of fifty pounds 
a year for the rest of her life. 

In the summer of 1831, after Miss Martin left Kentville, a Miss 
St. George opened in the village a select school for girls. The aim 
of this lady seems to have been to give her young ladies "accom- 
plishments" rather than solid instruction. She taught in the old 
school-house, but her school lasted only six months. Her pupils 
were considered rather remarkable for their beauty, among them 
being the Misses Kate and Mary Cogswell, Nancy Allison, Mary 
Miller Chipman, Margaret Ann Lovett, Caroline Barnaby, Margaret 
Starratt, Rachel Harris, and Susan and Minetta Hamilton. In later 
times Miss Catherine Gaul, from Rawdon, had a girls' school in the 
old school-house, and after her, Miss Mary Campbell taught there a 
school for small children. About 1856 Miss Esther Gould taught a 
small school for girls ; later than that, Miss Bessie Torrey, and Miss 
Bessie Swymmer, had schools. 

The first place of worship of any denomination in Kentville 
was a Methodist chapel, built in 1821 on the site of Alfred DeWolf 's 
house, on the hill above the house built by Sheriff Chipman. The 
trustees of this chapel were Messrs. James and Samuel Denison, who 
though of a Connecticut Congregationalist family, probably at this 
time favoured the Wesleyan faith ; and Col. "William Charles Moore, 
who was of the Anglican Church. Interest in Methodism among 
Kentville people was one of the results of the preaching in Cornwallis 
and Horton in 1782 of the noted pioneer Wesleyan preacher, the 
Rev. William Black, and for a long time the only religious services 
held in the village were conducted in this chapel by itinerant Wes- 
leyan ministers. These services, however, as a rule, came only once 
in two weeks, in the afternoon or evening, the ministers probably 
living at Windsor and preaching at Grand Pre in the forenoon. 
Occasionally, after he became pastor of the Wolfville Baptist 
Church, "Father" Harding came and preached, but sometimes, as 
when a Wesleyan Conference in some remote place took the min- 
isters of that denomination away from their circuit, there would be 
no religious service at all in Kentville for several weeks. In 1839, 



136 KING'S COUNTY 

soon after Acadia College was founded, the Rev. Edmund Albern 
Crawley, one of the earliest professors in the college, came regularly 
every other Sunday forenoon and preached in the Methodist chapel. 
In his stead, however, sometimes came Messrs. George Armstrong, 
Samuel Elder, Samuel Richardson, or some other Baptist student 
for the ministry. About 1849 a new meeting-house was built under 
the auspices of the Methodists, towards the west end of the village, 
near the entrance to the road which leads up the Academy hill. It 
was hoped by many that this structure would be a "Union" chapel, 
but the Methodists preferred to keep it exclusively for their own use. 
After the court-house and jail were burned, for a while the 
old chapel on the hill was used for both court-house and 
jail, the deputy sheriff, who was then George Clark, himself 
living in it as well. The building and the site later 
became the property of Mr. Henry Bentley "Webster, and 
he at his death willed it to his daughter, Mrs. Ina DeWolf, who 
still owns the land. The chapel was burned about 1860. 

The first services of the Anglican Church in Kentville were held 
in the school-house, but precisely how early we cannot tell. The 
Rev. John Storrs' ministry began in 1841, and it is possible that he 
was the first incumbent of St. John's parish, Cornwallis, who felt it 
necessary to give the Kentville people services in their own village. 
At whatever period services according to the Book of Common 
Prayer did begin, it is certain that they were held more or less 
regularly for some years preceding the building of St. James 
Church. This church was erected between 1843 and 1846. It stood 
on the west side of Church Street, a little back of the present 
marble-working shop, but in 1882 the Rev. John Owen Ruggles, 
M. A., Kentville 's then faithful Rector, with enormous labor had it 
removed to the site it now occupies, and somewhat enlarged. On 
its old, as on its present, site, its chancel was on the west, and like 
most churches of the period in which it was built it had spacious 
square pews on the wall side of the aisles and in the upper middle 
part. Along the east end ran a gallery, in the centre of which was 
the organ loft, which held a small pipe organ, and where the choir, 



KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 137 

consisting of well known young men and women of the village, sang 
the chants and hymns. Among the members of the early St. James' 
choir were Mrs. William Eaton, and her sister, Mrs. John Rufus 
Eaton, Misses Margaret Lydiard and Lavinia Harris, and Mr. John 
Blanehard, who was for many years the chief male singer in St. 
Paul's Presbyterian choir. At the lower end of the church, on the 
right of the entrance, was the small robing-room, and as the clergy- 
man in preaching always wore the scholar's gown, it was the 
invariable custom for him to leave the chancel during the singing 
of the hymn before the sermon, walk down the long north aisle to 
the robing-room, remove his surplice, and then attired in his black 
gown return to the pulpit. On Sunday evenings, at least, during the 
rectorship of Rev. Harry Leigh Yewens, it was not uncommon for 
this clergyman to wear gloves when he preached. 

At Christmas, St. James' Church was always tastefully 
wreathed with hemlock, the boughs for which were drawn to the 
door on ox or horse sleds, and taken into the church aisles. There, 
amidst fragrant balsamy odours, several afternoons and evenings 
before Christmas, a group of devoted parishioners, the young men 
assisting the ladies in the heaviest part of the work, would assemble 
to decorate the church. On Christmas morning, and on the Sunday 
following Christmas, the two hymns from the excellent but rather 
scanty collection in use, that were always sung were the familiar 
ones: "Hark the herald angels sing", and "While shepherds 
watched their flocks by night". Until St. James' Church was built, 
the Kentville people who were attached to the Anglican Church 
were accustomed on Sunday mornings to drive to the parish church 
of St. John's, at Cornwallis. Of families that did so, were the 
Col. Moores, the George Chipmans, the Caleb Handley Rands, and 
the James Delap Harrises. To the Presbyterian church at Chip- 
man's Corner went the families of Dr. Isaac Webster, and George 
and John Terry, and to the Baptist church at Canard, the Silas 
Masters' and the Charles Chipmans. The next church after St. 
James to be erected in Kentville was St. Joseph's Roman Catholic 
church, built no doubt in 1853. It was placed on the beautiful hill 



138 KING'S COUNTY 

where the present church stands, across the Cornwallis river. In 
1860, St. Paul's Presbyterian church was built on Webster Street, 
and last of all, in 1874, the Baptist church, toward the west end of 
the town. 

As Halifax was the chief centre of social life for the province 
at large, so the smaller shire towns were socially the most important 
places in the various counties they represented. Of these towns 
there was not a single one that had not a group of intelligent, well- 
bred men and women, of more or less education as the case might 
be, but of refined instincts and cultivated tastes, and of such people 
Kentville had a good share. At first social pre-eminence in Corn- 
wallis and Horton lay with the chief families that lived about the 
respective Town Plots, as the county's population increased west- 
ward, however, social importance more and more focussed itself in 
the shire town. Here as elsewhere through the county, there were 
not a few, both of ''Esquires", as Justices of the Peace, were tech- 
nically called, and "Gentlemen", as other men of standing were 
properly termed, but in social distinction the village never quite 
ranked with its neighbor, Windsor, the shire town of Hants. 
Windsor in the course of its history had many important families 
like the Butlers, Clarks, Cottnams, Cunninghams, Benjamin De- 
Wolfs, Franklins, Frasers, Haliburtons, Heads, McHeffeys, Porters, 
Nathaniel Ray Thomases, and others, who had aristocratic connec- 
tions in Halifax, Boston, or the British Isles, while the Kentville 
families' importance had been gained chiefly in King's County 
itself. Early in the history of the town people began to give grace- 
ful evening entertainments, at which cards and dancing formed the 
chief amusements, these accompanied with excellent suppers, 
for the people of King's County have always been noted for 
living well. After the middle of the 19th century, every winter 
saw a round of evening parties in Kentville, which in time extended 
itself to Starr's Point and Canning and the neighborhood between, 
at which dancing was kept up till a very late hout, the suppers 
being sumptuous and the wine and other stimulants as good as 
could anywhere on the continent be found. At these entertain- 



KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 139 

ments the music for dancing was usually furnished by two or three 
well known ladies, who were noted for the perfect time they kept, 
and who graciously took turns at the piano the long evenings 
through. Violinists, however, were sometimes hired to accompany 
the pianos. Picnics at the Bay Shore were in summer very frequent, 
people driving thither in single or double wagons. After the rail- 
road through the valley began to be built more strangers than ever 
before came to settle in and near the town, some of them young 
English families who had come out to Nova Scotia to try farming, 
or people who had been attracted by the reputation of the village for 
l)eauty and for health-giving air. Thus by the last quarter of the 19th 
century the society of Kentville became greatly enlarged. 

For the loveliness of its walks and drives Kentville is famous, 
and for the beauty of its shade-trees no village that we know can 
surpass it. From time immemorial high tributes have been paid to 
its charms by strangers who have come to visit it. In the Halifax 
Herald of June 8, 1898, a traveller through the province eloquently 
wrote: "Kentville has an individuality all her own, an individu- 
slity as charming as the absence of sameness is in people. Had Mrs. 
Hemans, who so poetically pictures ancient Rome as a queen sitting 
on seven hills, wisely elected to live until the present day and visit 
Evangeline's Land, she would have pictured Kentville as the chief 
lady of King's, sitting smilingly at the junction of seven roads, 
which like magic wands she stretches forth into the beautiful 
country surrounding her, when lo ! the orchard fairies, the dairy 
fairies, and other agricultural fairies, troop with their treasures 
toward her hospitable gates. If you have passed through Kentville 
in one of the comfortable Dominion Atlantic Railway cars you may 
perhaps imagine you have seen the town, but you have had only a 
glimpse of its attractions, its broad level streets, delightfully shaded 
with trees of oak and maple, its pretty residences, surrounded by 
grounds that give evidence of the artistic taste of their owners in 
landscape gardening, its five good churches, its commodious, well- 
kept hotels, its ample-sized stores, its far famed orchards, all these 
you cannot see from the windows of the car. 



140 KING'S COUNTY 

"Much as you may enjoy the town at close range you will want 
to view it as a whole, and there are several vantage points from 
which you can gratify this wish. From 'Chapel Hill' you see the 
southern portion of the town, nestling gracefully in its little valley, 
a cluster of new homes here being known as the 'Klondike', from 
the rapid growth of the town in this direction. You watch the clear, 
deep waters of the Cornwallis river flow silently through the green 
meadows at your feet. Behind you are orchards, where the exquis- 
its blossoms of the apple and pear, the drowsy murmur of the bees, 
and the merry flitting to and fro of golden butterfly-wings, charm 
you into silence. But you may leave Chapel Hill without saying 
good-bye to the lovely, fragile fruit blossoms, for you will find them 
in every part of the town. From the old Beech Hill road you have 
the most far-reaching view of the Cornwallis valley to the west and 
north of the town, a valley of verdant fields and thriving villages, 
the dark green of pine, fir, and spruce groves forming a striking 
contrast to the newly donned garb of the elm, oak and willow. 
Beyond this ne'er-to-be-forgotten view lies the North Mountain, 
which does not suffer the winds of heaven to visit too roughly the 
cosy villages which lie along its sheltering base. 

"One of the charms of Kentville is its central location, afford- 
ing opportunity for many varied and delightful drives. East of a 
little bridge which crosses Main Street, a road leads south over 
Canaan heights, following a tiny, musical stream of water known 
as Kentville Brook, its abrupt banks shaded with verdant, graceful 
willows. After a drive of three miles on this road you leave the 
queen's highway and a hundred or more yards to your left find 
Moore's Falls, a delightfully romantic and picturesque spot, where 
a goodly stream of water pours over a precipitous rock, thirty or 
forty feet high. You can return to Kentville on the other side of 
the brook, over Beech Hill road, and from a quite different 
viewpoint behold the narrow silver stream winding through its 
quaintly picturesque valley. North of the town, Cornwallis Street 
becomes Cornwallis Eoad, and over this you must drive to enjoy 



KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 141 

another magnificent view. Here you pass ''Gallows Hill", so named 
from the sad fact that a scaffold was once erected on it. 

''Westward, about a mile from the centre of the town, 
Main Street passes Sutherland's Lake, a waveless sheet of 
water that dreamily reflects the wooded hills in which it 
is enclosed. This pretty lake, over whose still surface you 
may gently glide on a summer day, is on the estate of Mr. 
Kenneth Sutherland, for some years Superintendent of the 
Dominion Atlantic Railway. To the east of the town, Cornwallis 
Street leads to Cornwallis, giving one many delightful glimpses of 
the river and the dykes. Passing mention has already been made of 
the gardens and orchards of Kentville, but the grounds of Messrs. 
Melville G. DeWolf, James W. Ryan, and John Carroll, Town Clerk, 
are so unique in their situation, are so skillfully cultivated, and 
have such a delightful mingling of rare flowers, rustic bowers, fruit 
trees, terraces, and hedges, that you will not be surprised to hear that 
the owners of these properties not only 'walk in the garden in the 
cool of the day ', but also work there while the slothful man sleepeth ' '. 
Of the orchards of King 's County in June we have elsewhere spoken. 
When the writer from whom we have just quoted was in Kentville, 
the country about the shire town was a succession of banks of 
beautiful pink and white bloom and the air was perfumed with a 
scent as delicious as the odours of Araby. The reference to Mr. Mel- 
ville G. DeWolf 's garden was sure to be made, for that garden was 
for many years the admiration of all strangers and the delight of 
the townspeople themselves. Mr. DeWolf 's property is now owned 
by St. James' Church, and the former owner, whose garden was so 
long the pride of the town, is recently dead. 

A drive he took from Kentville to the "Look Off" on the North 
Mountain in 1894, the late Mr. Frank Bolles of Harvard College has 
-described in the following way. "We crossed the Grand HaUtant 
or Cornwallis river at Kentville, and then followed the general 
direction of the shore of the basin until we had crossed in order, 
the Canard, Habitant, and Pereau rivers, and gained the North 
Mountain. Striking a ravine in its side, we ascended a well-made 



142 KING'S COUNTY 

road to the summit at a point called the 'Look Off'. I know of no 
other hill or mountain which gives the reward that this one does in 
proportion to the effort required to climb it. Many a rough White 
Mountain scramble up three thousand feet yields nothing like the 
view which this hill affords. The Nova Scotian glories in the fact 
that from it he can see into seven counties, and can count pros- 
perous farms by the score, and apple-trees by the hundred thousand. 
From the shores of the basin westward, through the valley between 
the North and South mountains, well-tilled farm lands reach 
towards Annapolis as far as the eye can see. It is a patchwork of 
which the Maritime Provinces are and may well be proud, that 
quilted landscape, with grain and potatoes, orchard and hayfield, 
feather-stitched in squares by zigzag pole fences. Were this the 
the whole or the essence of the view from the Look Off it would not 
be worth writing about, for farm lands by themselves, or with a 
frame of rounded hills, are neither novel nor inspiring. That which 
stirs in this view, is the mingling of Minas Basin, its blue water and 
dim farther shores, with Grand Pre, and the other dike lands and 
with the red bluffs of Pereau. The patchwork and hills serve 
only as contrast, back-ground, filling, to the pronounced feat- 
ures of sparkling sea, bright green meadows cleft from the sea by 
dikes, terra cotta sands and bluffs, and the forest-covered ridge 
leading towards half-concealed Blomidon, the monarch of this gay 
and sunlit realm. It was dreamlike to see the tide creeping in over 
the shining red sand and ooze, and changing their vivid tints by 
blending with them its own colours, to make tones strange both to 
sea and land. The wide expanses of mud left bare by the tide told 
in their own way the story of the Acadian dike builder ' '. 

By the beginning of the last decade but one of the 19th century, 
Kentville as the shire town of the county, and the headquarters of 
the Dominion Atlantic railway, had attained sufficient importance 
to ask for incorporation. Accordingly, on the 7th of December, 
1886, articles of incorporation were granted it, and on the 21st of 
the following January the first annual meeting of the rate-payers 
was held. The object announced in the proclamation for the meet- 



KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 143 

ing, was "to receive a report on the accounts and the condition of 
the public services of the town ; to receive an approximate estimate 
of the income and expenditures of the current year; to approve or 
otherwise of a proposal to convert the temporary school loan of a 
thousand dollars into a debenture loan of like amount, at a reduced 
rate of interest, etc., etc". The first election of town officers was 
held February 1, 1887, the result being that John "Warren King 
was elected Mayor, and James William Ryan, Robert Silas Masters, 
"William Eaton, Charles Frederick Cochran, Thomas Pennington 
Calkin, and Kenneth Sutherland, Councillors. The first meeting of 
the new Council was held, March 1, when Judge John Pryor Chip- 
man was elected Recorder, and William Eaton, unanimously. Town 
Clerk and Treasurer. His acceptance of the latter office removed 
Mr. Eaton from the Council and his place on this board was filled 
by the election of Charles Smith. The auditors elected were Col. 
Leverett de Veber Chipman, and Arthur E. Calkin. 

The successive Mayors of the Town since incorporation have 
been: 

John Warren King Charles Frederick Roekv/ell 

Judge John Pryor Chipman William Yould 

Henry Bentley Webster, M. D. Charles Frederick Rockwell 

Brenton Halliburton Dodge, M. P. P. Col. Wentworth Eaton Roscoe 
James William Ryan Henry Bentley Webster, M. D. 

Robert Silas Masters Harry Hamm Wickwire 

On the death of William Eaton, Town Clerk and Treasurer, in 
1893, Frank Herbert Eaton, D. C. L., was appointed in his father's 
place. Dr. Eaton held office, performing the duties largely through 
a secretary, until January 10, 1898, when the present incumbent, 
Mr. John Carroll, was appointed. Before 1888 the only towns in 
the Province incorporated, besides Halifax, were Dartmouth, Pic- 
tou, Windsor, New Glasgow, Sydney, North Sydney, and Kentville. 

Across the Cornwallis river from Kentville, on the main roads 
that run north, for many years have stood some small scattered 
houses, owned and occupied by people of the African race. From the 



144 KING'S COUNTY 

pine forest that originally covered the sandy country in this part of 
Cornwallis, this Negro settlement got the name it has always borne, 
the "Pine Woods", or as now, ''The Pines". A similar Negro settle- 
ment, known from the name of the chief family that settled there as 
the ''Gibson Woods", lies five or six miles to the northwest of the 
Pines. In the Pine Woods the chief families, originally, were 
named Bear, Jones, Landsey, and Smith, while individual families 
or persons bore the names Bell, Higgins, Lawrence, and Powell. In 
the 18th century, as we shall see, slavery existed in almost all the 
chief Nova Scotia towns, the King's County towns being no excep- 
tion to the rule. From slaves brought to the county by the early 
planters, or purchased after they settled here, a few of the Pine 
Woods and Gibson Woods Negroes have been descended, and from 
slaves who escaped from their owners in Maryland or Virginia and 
took passage on English war ships in Chesapeake Bay in 1814, 
probably others have come. One of the most respectable and 
respected of the Pine Woods coloured people of the 19th century 
was Elisha Lawrence, and tradition says that he came to Halifax 
on the Chesapeake after her encounter with the Shannon in 1813, 
later finding his way to Cornwallis, where he spent the rest of his 
life and died. Lawrence, perhaps alone of the Cornwallis Negroes, 
was a loyal member of the Anglican Church, and for many years 
his place in the south end of the gallery of St. James ' Church, Kent- 
ville, on Sundays, was never vacant. Long past the middle of the 
19th century, two old coloured women, sisters, Dinah Powell and 
Chloe Landsey, lived in the Pine Woods, both of them in their youth 
having been slaves in the family of Mr. Benjamin Belcher. In 
1783 Colonel Morse, commanding Royal Engineer in Nova Scotia, 
under instructions from Colonel Winslow, made a tour of the 
Nova Scotia settlements and in his census of the population of 
King's County specified a hundred and seven "servants", who 
were probably Negroes. Of these, thirty-eight were at Cornwallis 
and Horton, and sixty-nine at Parrsborough. In the census of 
1901, King's County is reported as having only two hundred and 
ten Negroes. 



KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 145 

In the Pine "Woods and at other spots near Kentville, for 
many years, there were also small, picturesque Micmac encamp- 
ments. In pointed, smoky, birch-bark covered wigwams, these 
simple sons of the forest and their families lived. They made bas- 
kets which they sold in the town, hunted in the woods, fished in 
the lakes and streams, and were always glad to accept of broken 
bread at the townspeople's doors. They were simple-minded, 
harmless, gently-moving people, some of whom, like ' ' old Madeline ' ' 
lived to the age of a hundred years, but most of whom died of 
exposure and poor living at a much earlier age. Like all their race 
in Nova Scotia they were nominally Roman Catholics, and on Sun- 
days and Saints Days, went to mass at St. Joseph's, the women 
wearing high bead-embroidered squaws' caps, or else men's tall 
silk hats, the accompaniment of which was not infrequently a 
blanket round the shoulders. 

Of the origin of the beautiful "Oak Grove Cemetery", in the 
extreme east end of Kentville, on what was once the property, 
successively, of Messrs. Benjamin Peck, Sr., and Jr., a few words 
must here be said. Whittier once wrote of the New England bury- 
ing grounds: 

"Our vales are sweet with fern and rose, 

Our hills are maple-crowned, 
But not from them our fathers chose 

The village burying ground; 

The dreariest spot in all the land 

To death they set apart; 
With scanty grace from Nature's hand, 

And none from that of art". 

But such charge cannot be brought against the pioneer plant- 
ers of King's County, and especially is it not true of the choice of 
a burial spot for the village of Kentville, made by the second Mr* 
Benjamin Peek. On the 8th of March, 1845, an act was passed by 
the legislature to provide for the supervision and management of this 



146 KING'S COUNTY 

earliest burying ground of the Kentville people. This act recites 
that, July 1, 1817, when Benjamin Peck, the younger, late of Hor- 
ton, with his wife Mary, deeded his farm to Joseph Barss, Jr., he 
reserved half an acre for a public burying place, in the grove of 
oaks, on the north side of the county road "where his honoured 
father and mother and several other persons were buried", this 
public burying ground to be perfectly open and free to people of 
all denominations forever. To Benjamin Peck, Jr., therefore, who 
in, or shortly before, 1817, removed with his family from Horton 
to the State of Ohio, we are indebted for the beautiful cemetery 
where most of the Kentville dead are buried. The original half- 
acre which Mr. Peck gave the town for a burial place has in course 
of time been greatly added to, until now several acres are conse- 
crated to the purpose for which the second English owner of the 
land gave a piece of his farm. . The first graves in the cemetery 
have tombstones which are still well preserved. The graves they 
mark are of Hannah Peck, who died Sept. 8, 1774, in the 6th year 
of her age ; Anna Lee, wife of Benjamin Lee, who died April 21, 1795^ 
in the 29th year of her age; Hannah Best, wife of John Best, who 
died May 6, 1798, in the 20th year of her age; Benjamin Peck (Sr.), 
who died October 24, 1801, in the 61st year of his age ; Sahra Peck, 
who died October 3, 1801, in the 21st year of her age; Eliza, 
third daughter of Benjamin and Mary Peck, who died December 17^ 
1803, aged 2 years and 8 months; Dan, second son of Benja- 
min and Mary Peck, who died aged 2 days; Henry Magee, 
a native of Ireland, a Loyalist from one of the revolting 
Colonies, who died "firmly attached to his King and Country "^ 
August 2, 1806, aged 67 years; Mary, wife of Cyrus Peck, who died 
May 2, 1808, in the 49th year of her age ; Patrick Murray, who died 
Dec. 10, 1808, in the 79th year of his age ; James C. Griffin, and his 
son Thomas, drowned Sept. 13, 1810, the father in the 50th, and the 
son in the 19th year of his age ; Cyrus Peck, who died April 13, 1812^ 
in the 66th year of his age; Hannah Peck, wife of Benjamin Peck, 
who died July 10, 1816, in the 72nd year of her age ; Joseph Barss, 
Jr., formerly of Liverpool, N. 8., who died August 3, 1824, in the 
49th year of his age. 



CHAPTER IX 

WOLFVILLE, CANNING, BERWICK, AND 

OTHER PLACES 

The second town in the county to receive incorporation, and 
the only one in the province save Windsor and Halifax, that has 
the dignity of being a college town is Wolfville, which lies a little 
to the west of the wide expanse of dyke known as the Grand Pre, 
To the original hamlet, on the main road from Horton Town Plot to 
Annapolis, which is now called Wolfville, the early planters with 
not very good taste gave the disagreeable name *'Mud Creek". 
Over the creek from which the name came, which here leads up 
from the Cornwallis river the people early constructed a bridge,, 
and this bridge, known as "Mud Creek", may properly be regarded 
as the middle point of Wolfville town. By 1829 or '30 the name 
^'Mud Creek" became so objectionable to some of the inhabitants 
that two young grand-daughters of Judge Elisha DeWolf, the 
Misses Maria and Mary Starr Woodward, proposed to their uneley 
Elisha DeWolf, Jr., who was postmaster at the time, that it should 
be changed to "Wolfville", and through Mr. DeWolf, the Post- 
master General of the province was appealed to. This functionary 
at once acceded to the proposed change, and the upper Horton Post 
Office Station was henceforth known as Wolfville. The younger of 
the ladies who were instrumental in having the name changed was 
afterward married to James Edward DeWolf of Kentville, and 
became the mother of Alfred, Stanley, and Melville G. DeWolf. 

The new name of the village was entirely appropriate, for along 
the Wolfville main street lived a considerable group of families 
bearing the DeWolf name. Of these were. Judge Elisha DeWolf, 
the leading man of the village, an important land-owner, who built 



148 KING'S COUNTY 

the house now known as Kent Lodge, and who had the honour of 
entertaining in his hospitable cottage, H. R. H. the Duke of Kent, 
when he was journeying from Halifax to Annapolis ; Daniel DeWolf, 
M. P. P., a remote cousin of Judge Elisha DeWolf and an almost 
equally prominent man; Daniel's brother Oliver, and son Robert 
Dickson, DeWolf j Judge Elisha 's sons, Hon. Thomas Andrew 
Strange DeWolf, a member of the Executive Council of the 
province, and Elisha DeWolf, Jr., M. P. P., postmaster for Wolf- 
ville; Stephen Brown and Joseph Brown DeWolf, sons of Edward, 
older brother of Judge Elisha ; and Charles DeWolf, Sr., of a third 
DeWolf family in Horton, and his son, Israel. The houses of the 
first residents of Wolfville were built on both sides of the post 
road, each house having its own garden and larger grounds. The 
liouse known as ''Kent Lodge", originally somewhat smaller than 
it is now, was the house in which Judge Elisha DeWolf reared his 
large family; the dwelling toward the lower end of Wolfville after- 
ward for many years occupied by Dr. Lewis Johnstone, was the 
house in which Hon. Thomas Andrew Strange DeWolf lived; the 
house in the upper part of the village, approached by a fine avenue 
of trees, afterward owned by Professor D. Francis Higgins, was 
built and occupied by Elisha DeWolf, Jr. 

' * Wolfville ' ', says a recent writer, ' ' is indeed a pleasant place. In 
front lies the placid basin of Minas, ever changing as the incoming 
and outgoing tides enlarge and narrow its area. On the right 
stretches away to the eastward the great dyked marsh known as 
the ' Old Dyke ' or ' Grand Pre ', and the new or Wickwire Dyke, the 
first in part reclaimed from the sea by the French, the second 
largely the work of their Anglo-Saxon successors. On the left may 
be seen the winding Cornwallis river, bordered by fertile fields 
and productive orchards; while in the middle distance, ten miles 
away, rises bold Blomidon, always majestic in his simple grandeur, 
but varying in beauty as the lights and shadows alternate upon his 
changeful brow. Sometimes he is capped with a fleecy cloud-cov- 
ering, at others he stands out in bold relief, the guardian of the 
inland waters; while as the seasons roll by, the soft blue tint of 



WOLFVILLE, CANNING, BERWICK 149 

summer in which he arrays himself, gradually changes to the 
sombre gray of winter. Beyond Blomidon, in the remote back- 
ground, stretches the long range of the Cobequids, the highest land in 
Nova Scotia. In the rear of Wolfville lies the Ridge, a spar of the 
South Mountain, from the summit of which some of the loveliest 
views in the province are obtained. On the north the view em- 
braces Minas Basin, with all its beautiful surroundings, and the 
luxuriant Cornwallis Valley, with its four tidal rivers, in the distance 
looking like silver threads. On the south we can look down into the 
famous Gaspereau Valley, lovely beyond words to describe. These 
views remain a part of the mental outfit of Acadia University's 
students, many of whom come back year after year to renew their 
early association with these attractive scenes". 

Back of Wolfville is the high ridge to which the writer we 
have quoted from refers, called ''Gaspereau Mountain", between 
which and the South Mountain lies the lovely Gaspereau Valley. 
Through this valley runs the gradually widening stream known as 
the Gaspereau river, from the mouth of which in 1755 Winslow's 
vessels sailed, carrying into dreary exile the unfortunate Acadian 
French. On the picturesque Wolfville hill-side, in full view of 
Minas Basin and green-mantled Grand Pre, stand the buildings of 
Acadia University, Horton Academy, and Acadia Seminary for 
women, while on the streets, shaded by luxuriant maples, that now 
at right angles intersect the long, sloping hill-side, are built the 
tasteful villas of the well-to-do inhabitants of King's County's uni- 
versity town. 

Of the view from the hill above Wolfville, the late Mr. Frank 
BoUes in 1894 wrote: "It was on the afternoon of the next day,, 
our second on the peninsula, that I saw Blomidon, at first from the 
Kentville slopes, and again, after we had followed down the dash- 
ing, dancing Gaspereau for several miles, from the heights above 
Wolfville. The Gaspereau Valley had been charming, by reason 
of its wooded hillsides, in parts holding the river closely between 
dark banks of spruce and fir, but later giving it freer range through 
well-tilled meadow and undulating fields. Evening, heralded by 



150 KING'S COUNTY 

rolling masses of dark clouds, seemed to be upon us, as our horses 
slowly climbed the steep slope of the Gaspereau, back of Wolfville. 
Then it was that, gaining the edge of the northern slope, we sud- 
denly saw the marvellous panorama of the Cornwallis Valley, North 
Mountain, Blomidon, the Basin of Minas, the Acadian dike-lands, in- 
cluding Grand Pre, and the mouth of the Gaspereau, spread before us 
under the sunset lights and the emphatic contrasts of speeding wind- 
clouds. The tide was out, and miles of basin bottom lay red and 
shining in the sunlight. The dike-lands were intensely green, the 
sands or mud, all shades of terra cotta, the shallows strange tones of 
purple, and the deeper waters varying shades of blue. Colour 
ran riot in meadow, mud, and bay. Above and beyond 
all, directly in front of us, miles away, at the extremity of a grand 
sweep of shore which curved towards it from our left, was a dark 
red bluff, crowned with evergreens. Its profile was commanding. 
From the edge of its forest it fell one quarter of the way to the sea 
in a line perfectly perpendicular. Then relenting a little, the line 
sloped to the waves at a gentler angle, but one still too steep for 
human foot to ascend. This was Blomidon, simple, majestic, 
inspiring. The distant northern shore of the basin was plainly indi- 
cated by a line of blue mountains, the Cobequid range, and we knew 
that between us and its rugged coast-line, the mighty pent-up tides 
of Fundy raced each day and night into the comparative calm of 
Minas, and spread themselves there over the red sands and up to 
the dikes which the Acadia peasants had built round about Grand 
Pre". 

"Wolfville was incorporated in 1893, and its population in 1901 
was 1,412. Its mayors, since incorporation have been: E, Perry 
Bowles, M. D., 1893- '94; J. W. Bigelow, 1895- '96; George Thomson, 

1897- '01; John Frederic Herbin, 1902- '03; DeWitt, M. D., 

1903- '05; W. M. Black, 1906- '09; Thomas L. Harvey, 1909- — . 

The hamlet that finally grew into the town of Canning, was first 
called Apple-Tree Landing, from the fact that near what was after- 
wards the ship-yard of Messrs. Ebenezer Bigelow, Sons & Co., where 
the village centred, stood an old apple-tree that had lasted from the 



WOLFVILLE, CANNING, BERWICK 151 

Acadian time, the stump of which was visible until perhaps 1860. 
Later, Canning was called Habitant Corner, but about 1830, a num- 
ber of the most prominent men residing there, among whom were 
John Wells, John SheflSeld, John Palmeter, Judah Wells, David 
Eaton, Jr., Nathan Woodworth, Benjamin Donaldson, Erastus 
Pineo, and Geo. Pineo, met and formally changed the name to Can- 
ning, in honour of either George Canning, statesman and orator, 
Governor-General of India and Prime Minister, or his illustrious 
son, Viscount Charles John Canning, who was also, during the In- 
dian Mutiny of 1857, Governor-General of India. 

The first householder at Apple-Tree Landing is said to have 
been a man by the name of Stewart (the name has been written 
Steward). If this information is correct, Stewart was also the first 
ship-owner of Canning, he is reported to have owned a small ves- 
sel and to have traded with her between Cornwallis and St. 
John. At the time the name of the place was changed 
to Canning, the chief houses in the settlement were : Benja- 
min Donaldson's, afterwards owned by John O. Pineo; John 
Wells', on the opposite side of the street; the ''Barlow 
house", occupied by John Sheifield, who had a large general 
store near; and William Woodworth 's, where afterward Stephen 
Sheffield's house stood. Below the corner, near where Charles E. 
Northup afterward lived, was Erastus Pineo 's house. Mr. Pineo, 
it is said, ** owned all the land east of Elias Burbidge's line, to the 
street leading from the hay-scales to the North Mountain, and back 
to the Heming farm. Where in recent times Edward Lockwood 
lived, was the house of a Mr. Faulkner, who also at an early date 
built vessels at Apple-Tree landing. Where afterward the late Mr. 
John H. Clarke lived, was a house, usually rented, belonging to Levi 
Woodworth, Sr., who also built the house in later years occupied 
by Ebenezer Bigelow. Then came the Merriam or Haze (?) 
House, on the river bank, south of the road, and next, the 
house of Geo. D. Pineo, afterwards owned by Benjamin Baxter 
Woodworth, — in recent years the oldest house in the town. The 
principal merchants of the place were: Benjamin Donaldson, who 



152 KINGS' COUNTY 

had rather large interests in shipping and did considerable general 
trade, and the firm of Sheffield & Wells, the partners in which were 
John Sheffield and Judah Wells. Where the thickest part of the 
town of Canning now is, however, was only the green river bank, 
over which sheep and cattle peacefully grazed in summer, and 
where the shad were divided when the boats brought the contents 
of the laden seines in. 

The first vessel that left a Canning ship-yard is said to have 
been built by Dr. William Baxter, and the next by a company, con- 
sisting of Ebenezer Bigelow, Joseph Northup, Edward Lockwood, 
and Edward Pineo. This vessel, which was considered for the 
time a large one, was of about two hundred tons, and was named the 
Sam Slick. A second vessel built for the same company, was named 
the Isabella. In 1847 a new ship-yard was started near the place 
where David M. Dickie long lived, and in it a company, consisting 
of Elias and Arnold Burbidge, and Charles R. Northup, built the 
Elizabeth Hastings, brigantine, which the owners sold to Captain 
Gault, of St. John. It is remembered that the purchaser of this ship 
paid for her entirely in Mexican silver dollars, which he carried in 
a bag. A store was built in Canning in 1850 by Edwin Dickie, and 
another, called the "Blue Store", from the colour it was painted, 
by Charles Dickie and his son David M. Dickie. After 1850, for six 
years, stores and houses went up rapidly in the town. 

The modern Canning owes its existence largely to the potato 
industry of Cornwallis. In 1844, owing to a prevalent disease in 
the potatoes of the New England States, the demand for Nova Scotia 
potatoes in the New England market was so great that the price of 
this vegetable rose to a dollar or a dollar and a quarter a bushel. A 
great part of the shipping of the potatoes of the county, for the 
Boston market, was done at Canning, and much of the money the 
farmers received for their crop was spent in the Canning stores. 
One writer on Canning's early history remembers when wagons 
and carts from all parts of the township, loaded with potatoes, 
filled the streets from morning till night, the vessels for their recep- 
tion lying at the wharves ' ' as many as eleven deep ' '. 



WOLFVILLE, CANNING, BERWICK 153 

Between 1839 and 1853 fourteen houses were erected in Can- 
ning, seven stores were opened, and one hotel was built. About 
1849 a factory was opened in the place for the manufacture of cut- 
lery, the machinery of which was driven by steam. This steam 
factory was the second steam-mill in the county, the first having 
been put in operation at ' ' Steam-mill Village ' '. A little before July 
15, 1866, the most destructive fire the county has ever had occurred 
in Canning. ' ' This fire tore its way in both directions, stopping only 
at John Smith's house on the west, and the barque, Providence, then 
in frames, on the east". Before daylight on the morning of the 16th 
(Sunday), over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of 
property had been destroyed, the whole business part of the town, 
including ten stores, having been burned. Nothing daunted, how- 
ever, the citizens soon recovered from the tremendous blow they had 
had, and out of the ashes new buildings began rapidly to rise. 
Before two years, with the exception of a few small gaps, the vil- 
lage was again wholly rebuilt. 

One of the most prominent merchants of Canning for many 
years was John Leander "Wickwire, Esq., son of Peter "Wickwire, 
and brother of William Nathan Wickwire, M. D., a leading medical 
practitioner of Halifax. Mr. Wickwire was the father of the pres- 
ent mayor of Kentville. The shipping firm to which he belonged 
was known as "Sheffield & Wickwire". Another family of impor- 
tance in Canning has long been the Eand family, in several 
branches; and still another the family of the late Mr. John H. 
Clarke. The most distinguished householder in Canning today is 
the Dominion Minister of Militia, Sir Frederick Borden, K. C. M. G., 
who has conspicuous notice in other places in this book. 

A brief description by Dr. Benjamin Rand, of Canning, as it 
was in the earliest times, will give us a still clearer idea of how the 
village began. Dr. Rand says: ''The location is a natural one, 
owing to the bend of the river where the waters run close to a high 
bank. The earliest settlement was at the upper end of the present 
village, where the road crossing the dyke meets the one running 
east and west. Here were the oldest houses, the brick school-house, 



IM KING'S COUNTY 

and later the post-office, and stores. The bend in the river at this 
place was called the 'Wash Bowl', and that at the lower end of the 
present village, 'Apple-Tree Landing'. Between the Wash Bowl and 
Apple-Tree Landing the land was chiefly divided into two farms, 
owned respectively by Messrs. Northup and Lockwood. The site of 
the present village was used as a place for drying fish, and the road 
wound close to the beach. Later the road was straightened and the 
land used for fish drying was divided into lots, on which was erected 
a row of stores ' '. 

A few miles east of Canning is the village of Kingsport, long the 
King's County point of departure for the Parrsborough packets, 
and now a favorite summer resort. In Kingsport, until 1878, stood 
a fine old oak, the last of a sturdy grove, under whose shade it is 
said the Micmacs in old days held councils of war, yearly feasts, 
and religious dances, and celebrated solemn marriage rites. A 
Kingsport newspaper correspondent in 1887 mourned the destruc- 
tion of this old tree in the following lines : 

"I mourn for the oak, the dear old oak. 

That stood by the side of the lane. 
For it sheltered me in my hours of glee, 

From the heat and the wind and the rain. 

"I mourn for the oak, the dear old oak. 

Though his trunk be torn and rent. 
He has stood the storm in his kindly form, 

Till he 's bowed with years and bent. 

"He stood like a Prince of the forest field, 

Defying the woodsman's stroke, 
But I saw the wield of the glittering steel. 

That felled the brave old oak. 

* * Yes, I love the oak, the dear old oak. 

For the years that have passed away. 
When close to his feet crept lovers sweet, 

To gather the flowers of May. 



WOLFVILLE, CANNING, BERWICK 155 

** 'Twas there they whispered their tales of love, 

As they saw the daylight fade, 
And plighted in youth their vows of truth, 

Under his broad green shade ; 

"And there, at the evening, twilight hour. 

When lovers are wont to meet, 
The night breeze hushed, and the old oak blushed. 

To look on a scene so sweet. 

*'0, I'll praise the oak, the dear old oak. 

For his constancy till death. 
For the tales there told he did ne 'er unfold, 

But their secrets died in his breast". 

One of the more important places in the county is Berwick, in 
the extreme western part of Cornwallis, in a district that used to 
be called ''Pleasant Valley". What is now the village of Berwick, 
was first called "Currie's Corner", then "Congdon's Corner", then, 
after 1835, when William Davison settled there, ''Davison's Cor- 
ner". The site of Berwick was cleared of woods about 1827-1830, 
and in 1835 there were three houses there. Among the chief pioneer 
settlers of the region were Benjamin Congdon, his half brother 
Enoch Congdon, and Deacon Abel Parker, who bought his farm of 
three hundred acres from Enoch Congdon, and April 4, 1827, re- 
moved from Aylesford to his new home. Of Mr. Parker's farm 
only one acre had then been touched by the plow, but the new owner 
set vigorously to work to clear it, and eventually, he became a 
prosperous man. At first, from his own small farm-house, with 
walls of grooved and tongued boards and with shingled roof, he 
could see in any direction only one other house, the house of Elizur 
Woodworth. 

In 1857, Baptist and Methodist churches were built at Berwick, 
and somewhere about that time, at a public meeting of the citizens, 
the present name of the place was given the growing village. The 
pronunciation of the name, it was distinctly understood, was to be 



156 KING'S COUNTY 

not BerricJc, as the English town of the same name is pronounced, 
but Burrwick, and Burrwick the village has commonly been called 
since. In the five years succeeding 1857, ten houses went up in 
Berwick, and in 1866 a weekly newspaper. The Star, was estab- 
lished there by James A. Halliday. Late in the 19th century, through 
the influence of Mr. Abel Parker, a girls' school was founded at 
Berwick, this gentleman giving the enterprise out of his own 
pocket, a hundred pounds. In time, however, the school was re- 
moved to "Wolfville, and from it has developed the present pros- 
perous "Acadia Seminary". Of the village of Berwick and the sur- 
rounding county, the Rev. D. O. Parker once wrote: "It crowns 
the highest land in the King's and Annapolis valley. The Corn- 
wallis river coming down the North Mountain flows through it to 
the east, and the Annapolis river from the South Mountain, flows 
west. The intervales, with their rich alluvial soil and lofty trees 
of ash and elm, and the uplands studded with clumps of thick 
forest; the bracing winds of winter, the balmy breath of spring, 
the genial warmth of summer, and the variegated glory of autumn, 
were the attractions which must have influenced our fathers in the 
early years of the present (19th) century to make these grand acres 
their home". 

In a preceding chapter we have given at some length the 
earliest tradition of the Aylesford village of Morden or French 
Cross. The present village was built chiefly between 1835 and 1868. 
In 1820 there were there only one or two houses and a few fisher- 
men's huts. The earliest permanent settlers seem to have been 
named, Benedict, Cook, and Dodge. About 1835 the place began to 
grow, and by 1868 it had become a considerable village. In 1854, 
through the instrumentality and by the munificence of Col. Butler^ 
an Anglican Church building, called "Christ Church", was erected 
there. 

Hall's Harbour received its name from the following event: 
About 1779 Samuel Hall, a native of King's County, who had left 
the province and settled in New England, piloted a privateering- 
band of seventeen men from the revolted colonies, to this point. 



WOLFVILLE, CANNING, BERWICK 157 

The company, captained by a man named Gow, made several 
marauding excursions into the valley, taking away cattle, and rob- 
bing houses and stores. At last the militia were aroused to action, 
and Abraham Newcomb, with about forty men, went to the har- 
bour. Newcomb's party found most of the robbers gone, three only 
having been left to guard the vessels, and these they fired on. Shat- 
tering the leg of one and wounding another under the arm, they 
made both prisoners; the third, however, escaped. From their two 
prisoners the pursuing party learned that the main body of the 
marauders had gone into the valley to rob Mr. Sherman's house and 
store at the Cornwallis Town Plot. Returning as quickly as pos- 
sible across the mountain, the pursuers found Sherman's house and 
store pillaged and the robbers not there. Again the King's County 
men took their way to the bay shore, but as they went to the east 
side of the harbour and the robbers had gone to the west, the 
marauders escaped. Hall himself went to Annapolis and it is prob- 
able got safely back to the United States. 

For a good while after this event Hall's Harbour served 
chiefly as a fishing station for the valley people. From 1826, how- 
ever, the place grew; in that year two families settled there and a 
mill was built. About 1830 the first store was opened at the place 
by Sylvanus Whitney, In 1835 the first vessel was built there; it 
registered perhaps five tons, and was called the Dove. In 1835 and 
'36, the place added about a dozen houses and two stores. 

In 1764, three or four families located at Scots Bay and began 
the present settlement there, among them people of the name of 
Andrews and Loomer. Tradition has it that shortly before this a 
vessel with some Scotch emigrants sailed up the Bay of Fundy, its 
passengers intending to settle at Cape D'Or. In a squall the vessel 
was driven ashore at the present Scots Bay, where she lay stranded, 
her passengers and crew, however, being saved. For some time 
the shipwrecked people wandered helplessly about, but at last they 
came on a solitary hunter. The man gave them food and led some of 
them down the mountain, but these soon returned to their first land- 
ing place. During the winter that followed, the Scotchmen made 



158 KING'S COUNTY 

frequent journeys into the valley for food, but what became of them 
in the end we do not know. From these temporary residents the 
place got its name Scots Bay. Early in the period which followed 
the coming of the New England planters to Cornwallis and Horton, 
shad fishing in a small way began to be carried on at Scots Bay. 
About 1800, weirs were made there on a larger scale, and great 
numbers of fish were caught. In perhaps 1835, a new seine was set 
in place of the ' ' great seine ' ' of 1800, and shares were bought in it,, 
but only by the proprietors of the soil at Scots Bay itself. The chief 
early settlers at Baxter's Harbour, which is ten miles west of Scots 
Bay, was Dr. William Baxter, of whom we have elsewhere given a 
conspicuous notice. 

About 1770 representatives of the Bill and Kockwell families 
settled at Billtown and began that village. In twenty years there 
were about ten houses there, few of them less than two miles apart. 
"What is now Hamilton's Corner, in Cornwallis, was at first and for 
a long time, known as "Jaw Bone Corner", or more simply "The 
"Whalebone". The reason for this name was that at a certain spot 
near the corner where the four roads meet was a gate with gate- 
posts made from a whale's jaw-bone. Port "Williams was settled by 
Terrys and Lockwoods, and for many years, as we have elsewhere 
said, was known as "Terry's Creek". The earliest settlers of Gas- 
pereau were the family of Eliphalet Coldwell and families named 
Benjamin, Martin, and Pierce. In time a considerable number of 
Horton people of other names took farms there, and the Gas- 
pereau settlement at last came to have a good deal of importance. 

One of the most conspicuous estates in the county is "St. 
Eulalie", the estate of Sir Robert Linton Weatherbe, Kt., at "Wall- 
brook, near Grand Pre, in Horton. It includes a portion of what 
it is believed was once a French hamlet named "Melanson", 
and is charmingly located. Sir Robert is an enthusiastic orchardist, 
and he and Lady "Weatherbe usually spent their summers on their 
King's County farm. 



CHAPTER X 

COUNTY GOVERNMENT, PUBLIC 

OFFICIALS 

When Governor Cornwallis came to Nova Scotia in 1749, one 
of his earliest acts was the erection and commissioning of courts of 
justice for the carrying out of the principles of English common 
law. In pursuance of his orders from the crown he at once erected 
three courts, a Court of General Sessions, a County Court, having 
jurisdiction over the whole province, and a General Court or Court 
of Assize and General Jail Delivery, in which the Governor and 
Council for the time being, sat at judges. In 1752, the County 
Court was abolished, and a Court of Common Pleas similar to the 
Superior Courts of Common Pleas of New England erected in its 
place. In 1754, Jonathan Belcher, Esq., was appointed the first 
Chief Justice of the province, and the General Court was supplanted 
by a Supreme Court, in which the Chief Justice was the sole judge. 

After the coming of the New England planters, new counties 
having been erected, courts of Common Pleas were multiplied and 
judges for them appointed, the first judges for King's County being 
Col. Robert Denison, Henry Denny Denson, and Isaac Deschamps. 
In 1829 Judge Haliburton wrote: "There is no separate Court of 
Common Pleas for the Province, but there are courts in each county, 
bearing the same appellation and resembling it in many of its 
powers. These courts when first constituted had power to issue 
both mesne and final process to any part of the Province, and had a 
concurrent jurisdiction with the Supreme Court in all civil causes. 
They were held in the several counties by Magistrates, or such other 
persons as were best qualified to fill the situation of judges, but 
there was no salary attached to the office, and fees, similar in their 



160 KING'S COUNTY 

nature, but smaller in amount than those received by the Judges of 
the Supreme Court, were the only remuneration given them for 
their trouble. As the King's bench was rising in reputation, from 
the ability and learning of its Judges, these courts fell into disuse, 
and few causes of difficulty or importance were tried in them. It 
was even found necessary to limit their jurisdiction, and they were 
restrained from issuing mesne process out of the county in which 
they sat. The exigencies of the country requiring them to be put 
into a more efficient state, a law was passed in 1824 for dividing the 
Province into three districts or circuits and the Governor was em- 
powered to appoint a professional man to each circuit, as first Jus- 
tice of the several courts of Common Pleas within the District, and 
also as President of the courts of sessions. 

In 1774 an act of the Legislature was passed, first establishing 
the circuits of the Supreme Court. This act authorized the holding 
of courts at Horton, Annapolis, and Cumberland, the sittings to last 
at each place not more than five days, and two judges always to be 
present. At Halifax the terms were fourteen days, liberty, however, 
being allowed for longer terms if the number of cases to be tried de- 
manded an extension of time. In 1783 the Supreme Court sat at Hor- 
ton on Tuesday, May 3rd, and Tuesday,' Sept. 4 ; the Superior Court 
sat at Horton on Tuesday, June 1, and Tuesday, Oct. 1; the Court 
of Sessions also met at Horton June 1st and Oct. 1st. In 1797 the sit- 
tings of the Supreme Court were held on the Monday next after the 
third Thursday of May and of September. The Sessions of the Peace 
were held on the first Tuesdays of June and October. In 1807 the 
Supreme Court sat at Horton on the fourth Tuesday of September, 
at Annapolis on the Tuesday following the sitting at Horton. The 
Inferior Court sat at Horton on the second Tuesdays of April and 
October. In 1828 the Supreme Court sat at Kentville on the first 
Tuesdays of June and September. No less than eighteen or twenty 
acts of the legislature relative to the times of holding the courts 
in the province, were passed between 1760 and 1840. 

In 1824 an act was passed changing the constitution of the 
courts of Common Pleas, and dividing the province into three Judi- 



COUNTY GOVERNMENT 161 

cial Districts: the Eastern District, to comprise the county of 
Sydney, the districts of Pictou and Colchester, and the county of 
Cumberland; the Middle District, the counties of Hants, King's, 
Lunenburg, and Queens; the Western District, the counties of 
Annapolis and Shelburne. On the 17th of March, Jared Ingersoll 
Chipman of King's was appointed Chief Judge of the Court of 
Common Pleas for the Eastern Division, William Henry Otis Hali- 
burton for the Middle Division, and Thomas Eitchie for the Western 
Division. The appointment of these judges and the amount of 
salary promised them met with much opposition throughout the 
province. In 1841, by an act of the legislature, the Inferior Courts 
of Common Pleas were abolished and the administration of law 
was generally improved. 

With the advent of the New England planters to the county, 
came the introduction of New England's time honoured institution, 
the Town Meeting. ' ' The New England town meeting was and still 
is", says Charles Francis Adams, ''the political expressions of the 
town", and many writers have spoken of the influence the institu- 
tion has had in developing and conserving that spirit of indepen- 
dence and sense of liberty which have been characteristic of the 
New England colonies and colonies sprung from New England. In 
all the New England settlements in Nova Scotia, the Town Meeting 
was from the first, in conjunction with the Court of Sessions, the 
source of local government. The Court of Sessions was composed 
of the magistrates or justices of the peace, the chairman of which 
was the Gustos Rotulorum, and its secretary, the Clerk of the Peace. 
By this court, the constables, assessors, surveyors of highways, 
school commissioners, pound keepers, fence viewers, and trustees 
of school lands, were appointed. In the Town Meeting the rate- 
payers met to discuss freely all local affairs, not the least impor- 
tant matter under its jurisdiction being always the relief and sup- 
port of the poor and the appointment of overseers and a clerk of 
overseers for carrying out the provisions for the needy the Town 
Meeting made. 

From the Cornwallis Town Book, we learn that April 1, 1771, 



162 KING'S COUNTY 

the Town Meeting voted to raise twenty pounds for the support of 
the poor in Cornwallis, and made choice of John Burbidge, Esq., 
Capt. Samuel Beckwith, Dr. Samuel Willoughby, Amos Bill, Esq., 
and Mr. Judah Wells, as assessors, to assess the amount voted on the 
inhabitants. Nov. 1, 1790 (Capt. Judah Wells, moderator), it was- 
voted to raise seventy pounds for the poor's support. The assessors 
appointed to raise this amount were, William Chipman Andrew 
Newcomb, Lemuel Morton, John Allison, and John Beckwith j 
Jacob Walton being appointed to serve as collector. April 4, 1791 
(Capt. Elkanah Morton, moderator), it was voted that seventy 
pounds be raised for the care of the poor, Messrs. William Chip- 
man, Elkanah Morton, Stephen Harrington, James Burbidge, and 
Samuel Starr, to be assessors; Mr. Benjamin Belcher to collect the 
voted sum. At a meeting held Nov 7, 1791, it was voted that the 
overseers should arrange with some doctor to take care of the needy 
by the year, a hundred pounds being the sum then set apart for the 
poor's support. At this meeting, Daniel Bowen, John Whidden 
Jonathan Sherman, Jonathan Rand, and William Webster, were 
made assessors, John Beckwith being appointed to collect the voted 
amount. For many years it was customary for certain rate-payer» 
to "bid off" one or more poor men, women, or children, for stipu- 
lated sums to be paid weekly by the town. In these cases, where it 
was possible, the rate-payers made the poor whom they bid off, use- 
ful in their homes ; for such service, and for the sum they received, 
giving the unfortunates, board, lodging, and clothes. Many persons 
also, who became town charges were ''farmed out" to men wha 
made their living wholly or in part by boarding them. In 1815, the 
sum raised in Cornwallis for keeping the poor was two hundred 
and forty pounds. 

May 7, 1858, an act was passed by the legislature to incorpor- 
ate a general Poor-House, the committee appointed to take the mat- 
ter in charge and assess for the building being : John M. Caldwell, 
Peter Wickwire, George W. Fisher, Levi W. Eaton, James Eaton, 
Charles Dickie, James Bligh, Robert W. Beckwith, John Roscoe,- 
and Holmes C. Masters. Another similar act was passed in 1867,. 



COUNTY GOVERNMENT 163 

the committee then appointed being "William IL Chipman, James 
Bligh, Leander Eand, Thomas Illsley, and Elias Calkin, For many 
years, now, Poor-Houses have existed in the three original townships 
of the county, and all the needy who become town charges are taken 
care of in them. Up to 1790, and how much later we do not know, 
the Town Meetings of Cornwallis were held in the Meeting-House, 
but after that they were held in some other convenient place. In 
1839 an act was passed to enable the inhabitants of Cornwallis to 
provide a public Town House for the holding of elections in that 
township. For this building the township was to be assessed in a. 
sum not to exceed two hundred pounds. 

In 1879 the three townships of the county were united in a cen- 
tral government, and the Town Meeting and Court of Sessions be- 
came things of the past. In place of the three townships now arose 
the Municipality of King's County, the sole governing body of 
which is the Municipal Council. Under this new system the county 
is divided into fourteen wards, twelve of which elect one coun- 
cillor each, and two, two councillors, for a term of two years. The 
Council as a whole then elects a Warden, who corresponds to the- 
Custos Kotulorum, of the old Court of Sessions, and whatever other 
officers it was the duty of the Court of Sessions to elect. Under the 
Municipality's control thus came all the interests that formerly per- 
tained to both the Town Meeting and the Court of Sessions. The 
change of the county to a Municipality was affected at a meeting 
held at the court house on Tuesday, January 13, 1879, pursuant to 
a notice by the then Sheriff, John Marshall Caldwell. When the re- 
turns from the respective returning officers of the several wards were 
declared, the officers of the Municipality were found to be : Warden, 
John W. Barss ; Clerk, Col. Leverett de Veber Chipman ; Treasurer, 
Hon. Thomas Lewis Dodge. Councillors: Ward 1 — Leander Band 
and Elijah C. West; Ward 2 — Dr. Charles Cottman Hamilton; 
Ward 3 — James Roseoe; Ward 4 — W, S. Sweet; Ward 5 — David 
Berteaux ; Ward 6 — James Lyons and Adolphus Bishop ; Ward 7 — 
Jehiel Davison ; Ward 8 — John W. Barss ; Ward 9 — John B. North ; 
Ward 10 — James Patterson; Ward 11 — ^Michael Lonergan; Ward 



164 KING'S COUNTY 

12— Thomas R. Harris; Ward 13— C. P. lUsley; Ward 14— Daniel B. 
Parker. 

It is said that one of the legal institutions of the county in very- 
early times was what was popularly known as ''Sheepskin Court", 
the function of which was to hear eases above the jurisdiction of 
magistrates, but below that of the Supreme Court, and that over 
this court for some time, while George Chipman was Sheriff, Col. 
William Charles Moore presided. Precisely what the court was, 
however, we do not know. To regulate all matters concerning the 
dykes of the county, in both Horton and Cornwallis, separate 
boards of Commissioners have always existed, their meetings being 
held more or less frequently, as occasion has demanded. 

Before 1761, two elections had been held in Nova Scotia for 
choosing representatives to the popular Assembly of the province, 
in the spring of 1761, another was held. It was in this third elec- 
tion that King's County first took part, and the result of the voting 
was that for the Township of Cornwallis, Dr. Samuel Willoughby 
and Captain Stephen West were elected; for the Township of Hor- 
ton, William Welch and Lebbeus Harris; and for the Township of 
Palmouth, Col. Henry Denny Denson and Isaac Deschamps. For 
the County were chosen. Col. Robert Denison, of Horton, and 
Charles Morris, Jr. In the third Assembly, which lasted from 1761 
to 1765, besides the King's County members, sat two members each 
from the counties of Halifax, Lunenburg, and Annapolis, and two 
each from the towns of Halifax, Lunenburg, Annapolis, and Liver- 
pool. The popular representatives in this third Assembly thus num- 
bered twenty-four, a third of whom were from the County of King's. 

In official reports of early Nova Scotia elections the title 
Esquire is always carefully given persons chosen to serve in the 
Assembly. 

JUDGES OP THE INPERIOR COUET OP COMMON PLEAS FOR KING's COUNTY. 

1761, Robert Denison, Henry Denny Denson, Isaac Deschamps 
1768, John Burbidge, Henry Denny Denson, Isaac Deschamps, 
Benjamin Gerrish 



COUNTY GOVERNMENT 165 

1783, John Burbidge, John Chipman, Lebbeus Harris, Dr. 
Samuel Willoughby 

1788, John Burbidge, John Chipman, Lebbeus Harris, John 
^hidden 

1794, John Burbidge, John Chipman, John Whidden 

1797, John Burbidge, John Chipman, Elisha DeWolf, Gurden 
Denison 

1810, John Burbidge, William Campbell, John Chipman, Gurden 
Denison, Elisha DeWolf 

1815, William Campbell, John Chipman, Jonathan Crane, Elisha 
DeWolf, David Whidden 

1821, William Campbell, John Chipman, Elisha DeWolf, David 
Whidden 

1825, William Campbell, John Chipman, Elisha DeWolf, 
Charles Eamage Prescott, David Whidden 

1828, William Campbell, John Chipman, William Allen Chip- 
man, Elisha DeWolf 

1840, William Campbell, William Allen Chipman, James Delap 
Harris 

In the Books of the Council at Halifax no record can be found 
of the appointment of High Sheriffs in King's County before 1782. 
Earlier than that, however, to make arrests, serve processes, and do 
the other necessary v^ork of a sheriff there must have been locally 
appointed sheriffs, and a tradition remains that the first sheriff of 
the county was Jonathan Hamilton, the second Sherman Denison. 
Jonathan Hamilton, one of the Horton grantees of 1761, died Feb. 
24, 1778, and if his successor in the sheriff's office was a Denison, 
the person must have been David Sherman Denison, born in Con- 
necticut in 1734, died in Horton in 1796 

In 1778 an act was passed by the legislature, and in 1780 con- 
firmed by the crown, empowering the Governor, Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor, or Commander-in-Chief, to appoint sheriffs in such counties 
as needed them, and for King's, though we have found no record of 
his appointment, we feel certain that the first appointee was Thomas 



166 KINGS' COUNTY 

Farrel. Of other county officials than sheriffs before 1812, owing to 
the loss, which it is hoped is only temporary, of the records of the 
Court of Sessions to that time, it is difficult to get a complete list 

HIGH SHERIFFS 

Thomas Farrel Appointed Jan. 7, 1782 

Daniel Dickson Appointed Dec. 13, 1782 

Elisha DeWolf, Sr. Appointed Jan. 16, 1783 

John Thomas Hill Appointed Dec. 17, 1792 
[He died in 1800] 

David Whidden, Sr. 1801—1809 

[He married Oct. 6, 1794, Eunice, sister of Sheriff George 
Chipman] 

George Chipman 1809—1838 

[He was born April 23, 1774, and died April 7, 1838] 

William Charles Campbell 1838—1855 

John Marshall Caldwell 1855—1881 

[He was born June 15, 1801; appointed Sheriff Dec. 12, 1855; 
and died Nov. 6, 1881] 

Stephen Belcher 1881—1905 

Charles Frederick Rockwell 1905 — 

[It will be noticed that David Whidden and George Chipman 
were brothers-in-law. During part, at least, of George Chipman 's 
term of office, his older brother, Charles Chipman, born July 9, 1772, 
died about 1851, was Deputy Sheriff] 

JUDGES OF PROBATE 

Isaac Deschamps 1768 — 1781 

Handley Chipman 1781—1799 

William Charles Campbell 1801—1836 

Thomas B. Campbell 1837—1840 



COUNTY GOVERNMENT 167 

John Clarke Hall 1841—1853 

William H. Keating 1853—1856 
[The dates given Mr. Keating 's incumbency are probably- 
correct] 

George Augustus Blanchard 1856 — 1879 

Stephen Harrington Moore 1880—1886 

Edmund James Cogswell 1888 — 

CLERKS OP THE PEACE 

John Chipman David Whidden 

John Wells Rev. William Chipman 

Jared IngersoU Chipman William Henry Chipman 

William Charles Campbell Col. Leverett de Veber Chipman 

[This list is probably correct] 

CUSTOS' ROTULORUM 

Handley Chipman 1792—1799 

John Chipman 1799—1836 

William Allen Chipman 1843—1846 

Hon. John Morton 1848—1857 

Hugh Logan Dickie 1858—1873 

Samuel Chipman 1874—1879 

JUSTICES OF THE PEACE 

1768, Joseph Bailey, John Burbidge, Handley Chipman, John 
Day, Henry Denny Denson, Isaac Deschamps, EUvs-ard Ellis, George 
Feath, Lebbeus Harris, Elisha Lothrop, Charles Morris, Jr., William 
Nisbet, William Tonge, Samuel Willoughby 

1783, William Best, John Bishop, Jr., John Burbidge, Handley 
Chipman, John Chipman, Jonathan Crane, Lebbeus Harris, Charles 
Morris, Joseph Pierce, Jonathan Sherman, John Whidden, Samuel 
Willoughby. By 1788 the number had increased to seventeen. Jus- 
tices appointed between these dates were: Daniel Bowen, Finley 



168 KING'S COUNTY 

Burn, Antil Gallop, Benjamin Hilton, Thomas William Moore, Ed- 
ward Potts, John Vought. The names of William Best and Samuel 
WiUoughby had been dropped. 

1792, Benjamin Belcher, John Bishop, Jr., Daniel Bowen, John 
Burbidge, Colin Campbell, William Campbell, Handley Chipman, 
John Chipman, Jonathan Crane, Gurden Denison, Elisha DeWolf, 
John Fraser, Benjamin Gerrish Gray, Edward Potts, Thomas Rateh- 
ford, Jonathan Sherman, Robert Walker, John Whidden 

1797, John Allison, Benjamin Belcher, John Bishop, Sr., Daniel 
Bowen, John Burbidge, Colin Campbell, William Campbell, Handley 
Chipman, John Chipman, Jonathan Crane, Gurden Denison, Elisha 
DeWolf, John Fillis, John Fraser, Benjamin Gerrish Gray, John 
Thomas Hill, James Kerr, Elkanah Morton, Edward Potts, Thomas 
Ratchford, Jonathan Sherman, E. Taylor, Robert Walker, John 
Whidden 

1807, John Allison, John Bishop, Jr., Daniel Bowen, John Bur- 
bidge, William Campbell, John Chipman, William Allen Chipman, 
Jonathan Crane, Gurden Denison, Elisha DeWolf, John Fillis, John 
Fraser, Benjamin Gerrish Gray, Stephen Harrington, James Kerr, 
Elkanah Morton, Charles R. Prescott, James Ratchford, Jonathan 
Sherman, E. Taylor, David Whidden 

1815, James Allison, Samuel Bishop, William Campbell, Wil- 
liam Chipman, William Allen Chipman, Jonathan Crane, Sherman 
Denison, Daniel DeWolf, Elisha DeWolf, Simon Fitch, James S. 
Fullerton, Stephen Harrington, James Harris, Rev. John Inglis, 
D. D., James Kerr, Daniel Lockhart, Elkanah Morton, Rev. Robert 
Norris, James Ratchford, James Noble Shannon, Alexander Walker, 
John Wells, David Whidden, Samuel Wilson 

1825, James Allison, Samuel Bishop, William Campbell, John 
Chipman, William Chipman, William Chipman, Jr., William Allen 
Chipman, Samuel Denison, Daniel DeWolf, Elisha DeWolf, Simon 
Fitch, James S. Fullerton, Harris Harrington, James Harris, James 
Delap Harris, James Kerr, Jesse Lewis, Daniel Lockhart, James 
Ratchford, Alexander Walker, John Wells, David Whidden 

1843, Mayhew Beckwith, Caleb R. Bill, Charles H. Brown, Seth 



COUNTY GOVERNMENT 169 

Burgess, "William C. Campbell, Samuel Chipman, William Allen 
Chipman, James N. Crane, Jonathan Crane, Nathan Davison, Sher- 
man Denison, Elisha DeWolf, Hugh L. Dickey, Simon Fitch, Harris 
Harrington, James Harris, James Delap Harris, John F. Hutchinson, 
William Johnson, Daniel Lockhart, George Lockwood, Thomas 
Lovett, John Lyons, Henry Magee, William Miller, Hon. John Mor- 
ton, Edward Palmer, Nathan Parker, Alexander Patterson, John 
Patterson, 3rd, George D. Pineo, Caleb Handley Rand, Samuel Sharp, 
Fairfield Smith, Richard Starr, John Wells 



PROTHONOTARIES 




Samuel Denison 


in 


office in 


1814 


Samuel Leonard Allison 






1821—1834 


William Henry Chipman 






1835—1855 


George Eaton Barnaby 






1856—1869 


Henry Lovett 






— — 


Charles Frederick Rockwell 






—1905 


Robert C Dickie 






1905— 



DEPUTY REGISTRARS OP DEEDS 

The Registers of Deeds begin as follows: Cornwallis in 1764; 
Horton in 1766 ; Aylesford in 1820. 

John Burbidge (for Cornwallis) 1768—1786 

Nathan Dewolf (for Horton) 1768— 

Benjamin Belcher 1789—1792 

William Campbell (for Cornwallis, Horton and 

Aylesford) 
James Ratchford (for Parrsborough) 
Thomas B. Campbell 
David M. Dickie 
Frederick Brown 
Annie M. Stuart 



17a KING'S COUNTY 

TOWNSHIP CLERKS 

Cornwallis: William Allen Chipman, Ward Eaton, James 
Stanley Eaton 

Horton: Samuel Denison, James P. Johnson, James Morse, 
Oustavus Bishop 

Parrsborough : James Eatchf ord, etc. 

Aylesford : Robert Kerr, Parker Spurr, etc. 

COLLECTORS OP CUSTOMS 

Our knowledge of the county's various collectorships of 
customs, before 1824, is not very complete. It is said that Elisha 
DeWolf was appointed excise officer for Horton (perhaps for the 
county) in 1819. In 1824 Mr. DeWolf was acting as "Pro-collector" 
for Horton, David Whidden of Cornwallis having been appointed 
*' Collector of Import and Excise," several years before. The title 
«f the office varies, it was sometimes * ' Collector of Customs, ' ' some- 
times ''Collector of Colonial and Light Duties," sometimes ''Col- 
lector of Customs and Navigation Laws". In 1839 and '40, T. D. 
Dickson was collector at Parrsborough, and in 1842 and '43 William 
Lovett served as "Seizing Officer." In 1850, besides David Whidden, 
there was in this office as "Collector of Colonial Duties" on the Bay 
Shore, west of Hall's Harbor, John Givan. At that date, Isaac 
Hamilton, William North, W. H. Lovett and John Givan were 
"Seizing Officers". About 1853 (at least before 1855), Edward 
Lockwood succeeded David Whidden as Collector at Cornwallis, 
Joseph Crane became Collector for Horton, Cornelius V. Rawding 
for Canada Creek, and John Orpin for French Cross (Morden). 
John Givan still continued Collector for the Bay Shore, west of 
Hall's Harbor, and Isaac Hamilton, W. H. Lovett, and John Givan 
remained Seizing Officers. Before 1858, an additional office of 
** Surveyor of Shipping" was created, and Edward Lockwood re- 
ceived the appointment to it. An additional Seizing Officer was 
also appointed in the person of Abraham Ogilvie. 

November 14, 1859, Ebenezer Rand became Collector for 



COUNTY GOVERNMENT 171 

Cornwallis, but from 1860 to 1863, Edward Lockwood was again 
Collector. Sept. 29, 1863, Ebenezer Rand was appointed Collector 
for Cornwallis, and in the office he remained for twenty-five years; 
his resignation of the Collectorship at Cornwallis and the Chief 
CoUectorship being offered, March 1, 1888. After the confederation 
of the provinces a head Collector was appointed for each county, 
and sub-collectors under him were appointed at the outposts. In 
King's County, Ebenezer Rand became Chief Collector, Cornelius 
V. Rawding, becoming Sub-Collector at Canada Creek, Robert 
Farnsworth at Morden, Edwin DeWolf at Horton, and Henry Morris 
at Harborville. The Seizing Officers were Abraham Ogilvie, George 
Lockwood, Elijah Rockwell, and Simon N. Porter, July 1, 
1873, George Lockwood, whose first appointment as Seizing 
Officer was on the 1st of July, 1860, became Sub-Collector at Port 
"Williams, and March 14, 1874, John Edwin Orpin, whose earliest 
appointment as Seizing Officer was on the 1st of April, 1853, became 
Sub-Collector at Morden. June 10, 1879, Stephen W. Rawding 
succeeded his father, Cornelius V. Rawding, as Sub-Collector at 
Canada Creek. April 3, 1880, Joseph Benjamin Davison became 
Sub-Collector at Wolfville. January 1, 1886, Charles Eugene Morris 
succeeded his father, Henry Morris, as Sub-Collector at Harborville. 
May 1, 1888, Frederick Clarence Rand succeeded his father, Ebenezer 
Rand, as Collector at Cornwallis and Head Collector for King's 
County. 

August 1, 1888, the Chief Collectorship was removed from Can- 
ning to Kentville, the great increase in the imports of this town, as 
a railway centre, making the change necessary. At this time, 
Edward Harris was appointed Sub-Collector for Canning. Owing 
to the increase of trade along the line of railway, and to its decline 
at the shipping ports on the Bay of Fundy, other changes, also, soon 
followed. Berwick, on the railway, was created an outport, and 
July 15, 1894, Stephen lUsley was appointed its Sub-Collector. 
Kingsport, likewise became an outport, and Nov. 1, 1897, Elijah C. 
Borden was made its Sub-Collector. Aylesford Station became a 
third outport, and January 1, 1900, J. Caldwell "West was made its 



172 KING'S COUNTY 

Sub-Collector. Feb. 1, 1896, Caleb Rand Bill succeeded Joseph B. 
Davison as Sub-Collector at Wolfville; Sept. 4, 1897, Charles H. 
Norwood succeeded Stephen lUsley at Berwick; Oct. 1, 1901, John 
E. Bigelow succeeded Edward Harris at Canning ; and March 1, 1906, 
John Rufus Starr succeeded George Lockwood at Port Williams. 
Abram Ogilvie, whose first appointment as Preventive or Seizing 
Officer bore date April 1, 1856, continued in that office till his death. 
Likewise, also did Simon N. Porter, who was first appointed Decem- 
ber 30, 1864. The latter was succeeded in his office by his son. 
When the trade of the seaports passed to the growing towns along 
the railway, in the valley, the customs officers at Morden, where 
John Edwin Orpin was Sub-Collector for many years, and at Har- 
borville, where Cornelius V. Rawding was likewise a veteran Sub- 
Collector, were reduced, as in earlier days, to Seizing Officers. 

In 1910 the Chief CoUectorship of the county is still held by 
Frederick Clarence Rand. 

POSTMASTERS 

It is not easy to secure a complete list of the Postmasters of 
the county from the beginning, but the following have acted in this 
capacity at different times, some of them for a good many years. 

Borden H. A. Canning 

Borden Judah Lower Horton 

Chase Albert Port Williams 

Cox Joseph B. Kingsport 
DeWolf Elisha, Jr. [Appointed in 

1831] Wolfville 

Eldridge James W. Long Island 

Forsyth Enoch Port Williams 

Parker John M. Berwick 

Band George V. Wolfville 

Ratchford James Parrsborough 

Van Buskirk H. Aylesford 

Van Buskirk James Aylesford 



COUNTY GOVERNMENT 173 

Successive Postmasters at Kentville have been : 
James Bragg 1830—1831 

Daniel Moore 1831—1834 

John F. Hutchinson 1834—1867, June 28th 

James P. Cunningham [Appointed, but served a very short time]' 
George E. Calkin 1867—1876 

Walter Carruthers 1876— 

Joseph Edwin Eaton — 1892 

Joseph R. Lyons 1892 — 

[Mr. Lyons is postmaster in 1910] 

CORONORS 

This office was first established about 1830. 

1830, William Charles Moore ; Daniel DeWolf ; James Allison. 

1843, James Allison ,- John Fisher ; John E. Forsyth, M. D. ; Wil- 
liam Charles Moore 

1855, Jonathan Borden, M. D. ; John Fisher; Charles Cottnam 
Hamilton, M. D. ; Charles W. H. Harris ; Holmes Masters, M. D. ; A. 
Van Buskirk 

1867, Jonathan Borden, M. D. ; Gideon Cogswell; Stephen 
Dodge, M. D. ; Gilbert Fowler; Charles Cottnam Hamilton, M. D.; 
George Hamilton; Charles W. H. Harris, Henry Lovett, Holmes 
Masters, M. D. ; Harris 0. McLatchy, M. D. ; James S. Miller, M. D. ; 
Henri Shaw, M. D. ; William H. West 

COMMISSIONERS FOR TAKING SPECIAL BAIL 

1788, Cornwallis, John Burbidge ; Horton, Nathan DeWolf 
1792-1809, Cornwallis, John Burbidge ; Horton, Samuel Denison 
1843, Thomas B. Campbell; William Henry Chipman; James 
Delap Harris; Caleb Handley Rand, 

OTHER OFFICERS,. 

1769-70, Naval Officer for the Port of Windsor and the rivers 
flowing into the Basin of Minas, Isaac Deschamps; County Treas- 
urer, Nathan DeWolf. 



174 KING'S COUNTY 

BAREISTERS AND ATTORNEYS m KING's COUNTY 

1843, John Clarke Hall, Stephen Harrington Moore, Henry 
Bentley Webster, L. D. Morton, Elias Tupper, Charles W. H. Harris^ 
"William C. Whidden, James Robert Prescott. [Court of Chancery: 
Charles W. H. Harris, James Robert Prescott] 

1860, George Augustus Blanchard, Charles W. H. Harris, Thomas 
William Harris, Stephen Harrington Moore, James Robert Prescott^ 
Edward Allan Pyke, Henry Bentley Webster 

1867, George A. Blanchard, Charles W. H. Harris, Thomas Wil- 
liam Harris, Q. C. ; Stephen Harrington Moore, James Robert 
Prescott, Edward Allan Pyke, Henry Bentley Webster 

1876, George Augustus Blanchard, John Pryor Chipman, Ed- 
mund J. Cogswell, Thomas William Harris, Q. C. ; Joseph J. Moore^ 
James Robert Prescott, Edward Allan Pyke, Benjamin Smith, Bar- 
clay Webster, Douglas B. Woodworth 

1908, Edward B. Cogswell, Sydney E. Crawley, A. E. Dunlop,. 
Howard G. Harris, George Johnson, Charles Archibald McLean^ 
Frederick A. Masters, Louis F. Newcomb, William F. Parker, Avard 
B. Pineo, Frederick Clarence Rand, Col. Wentworth Eaton Roscoe,, 
Barry W. Roscoe, William P. Shaffner, Clifford A. Tufts, Barclay 
Webster, K. C. ; Harry Hamm Wickwire 

A few of the many lawyers the county has produced besides the 
above, are: Jared Ingersoll Chipman, James A. Denison, Brenton 
Halliburton Eaton, K. C. ; Harry Havelock Eaton, Robie Lewis Reid^ 
John Whidden, for many years Clerk of the House of Assembly, and 
Joseph Whidden, also Clerk of the House. 

Physicians in the county in 1876, were : Andrew DeWolf Barss^ 
George Bell, E. Perry Bowles, Henry Chipman, W. Gibson Clarke, 
Albert DeWolf, James R. Fitch, J. Newman Fuller, William J. Ful- 
lerton, Charles Cottnam Hamilton, Harris O. McLatchy, F. Middle- 
mas, James S. Miller, John A. Morse, George E. Outhit, Charles N. 
Payzant, Henri Shaw, Mason Sheffield, John Struthers, Henry Bent- 
ley Webster, S. W. Woodworth. Of these physicians, all except ono 
received their medical education in the United States. Drs. Bellj. 



COUNTY GOVERNMENT 175 

Chipman, Clarke, DeWolf, Middlemas, Morse, and "Woodwortli at 
Harvard; Drs, Fitch, Shaw, and Webster at the College of Physi- 
cians and Surgeons, New York ; Drs. Fuller, Fullerton, Sheffield, and 
Struthers at Bellevue, New York ; Dr. Charles Cottnam Hamilton at 
the University of Pennsylvania; Drs. McLatchy, Outhit, and Pay- 
zant at Jefferson, Medical College ; Dr. Miller at the Berkshire Medi- 
cal College; Dr. Barss at the University of Edinburgh. Physicians- 
the county has produced besides the above have been, James R. 
Avery (practised in Halifax) ; John Barnaby (practised in Queen'* 
County, N. S.) ; William Baxter, Edward Beckwith, John Leander 
Bishop (practised in Philadelphia) ; Adolphus Borden (practised at 
New Bedford, Mass.) ; Sir Frederick W. Borden, K. C. M. G.; Jona- 
than Borden, Edward L. Brown, Barry Calkin (practises at Jamaica. 
Plain, Mass.) ; A. Chipman, (practised at Turk's Island) ; Reginald 
Chipman (practises in Chelsea, Mass.) ; Silas Crane, Gurden Denison, 
Joseph Denison (practised in Bridgeton, N. S.) ; Edward DeWolf ^ 
James Ratchford DeWolf (long Medical Superintendent of the In- 
sane Hospital at Dartmouth, N. S.) ; Stephen DeWolf (practised in 
New York City) ; Robert Dickey, Somerville Dickey, Simon I'itch, 
John E. Forsyth, William Forsyth, John Fox (Surgeon R. N.) ; N. 
Fuller, E. Harding (practised at Windsor) ; Charles W. Hamilton,. 
Charles Harris, J. W. Harris, Holmes Masters, Willis B. Moore 
(practises in Kentville) ; Van E. Parker, E. P, Payzant, Obadiah. 
Pineo (Surgeon R. N.) ; Peter Pineo (practised in the United States) f 
George Van Buskirk, J. Walton, Arthur Webster (practises in Edin- 
burgh) ; David Webster (practises in New York City) ; Frederick 
Webster (practised in Yarmouth, N. S.) ; Isaac Webster, William B» 
Webster, B. Welton, William N. Wickwire, (practised in Halifax) j 
Percy Woodworth, William S. Woodworth (both the latter prac- 
tise in Kentville). 



CHAPTER XI 

ROADS AND TRAVELLING, DYKE 
BUILDING 

In every country the building and proper care of roads and 
bridges is one of the people's earliest and chief interests, and 
in our account of the French occupation of King's County we have 
endeavored to give some accurate idea of the earliest roads that 
intersected the two townships of Horton and Cornwallis in French 
times. As early as 1701 Governor Brouillan says of the Minas 
Acadians: "1 proposed to these demi-republicans to make a road 
for ten leagues across the woods to get to Port Royal. They have 
engaged to execute this project as soon as harvest is over. They 
can subsequently make a like one to Laheve". In 1749 Governor 
Cornwallis writes to the Duke of Bedford that the French inhab- 
itants have cleared a road eighteen feet wide, all the way from 
Minas to Halifax. Of the course of this road, between Grand Pre 
and Kentville, we have the following tradition : * ' It ran nearer the 
dykes and intervales of the Cornwallis river than it does now. 
From the numerous hills and thickets beside it, it was dangerous 
to travel, accordingly when the New England planters came they 
changed it to its present course". Of the earliest efforts of the 
New England planters at road and bridge building we know very 
little, though after 1812 we have abundant testimony in the rec- 
ords of the Court of Sessions to the People 's activity in the matter. 

In these records, which deal with all sorts of local affairs, the 
trial and punishment of statutory offences, the assessment of taxes, 
the building of dykes, the regulation of fisheries in bays and rivers, 
legislation concerning the building and repair of roads and bridges, 
occupies, probably, the largest space. In 1763 the Council voted 
fifty pounds for mending the road between Granville and Horton, 



ROADS, TRAVELLING, DYKES 177 

and no doubt to the object for which it was granted the subsidy 
was applied. In 1775 Governor Legge repeats a request he had 
previously made of the legislature, for a grant of five hundred 
pounds to improve the roads of the province, and we presume the 
money was given. If so, a certain proportion of it probably went for 
the roads in King's County. In 1799, the Governor, Sir John Went- 
worth, recommended to the Assembly the completion of the roads 
to Annapolis and Pictou. In 1814 or '15 a new road was surveyed 
by the government surveyor, Mr. Morris, from Halifax to Annapolis, 
the whole distance to be a hundred miles. The expense of the 
survey was a hundred and thirty-three pounds, six shillings. 

The first bridge across the Cornwallis River at Port Williams 
{Terry's Creek) was built at least as early as 1780. In 1818 an 
act was passed by the legislature for "rebuilding and repairing" 
this bridge. Whether it was the first bridge or a second that was 
finally carried out by the tide, piers and all, we do not know, but 
in 1825 an act was passed by the legislature, incorporating a com- 
pany to build a new bridge. In 1827 the legislature voted towards 
the enterprise the sum of seven hundred and fifty pounds. Five 
years later the sum of eleven hundred and fifty pounds more was 
granted for the same purpose. In 1834 another act of incorpora- 
tion, similar to the one of 1825, passed the legislature, the former 
one being repealed. In 1835 the bridge was opened. The piers of 
it, which are still standing, were constructed by Joseph Winthrop, 
who came from Hants County to build them. The bridge was for 
many years a toll-bridge, and sometime after the middle of the 
century, John Lingley was toll-keeper. 

March 19, 1842, an act was passed by the legislature to in- 
corporate a pier or wharf near French Cross, in Aylesford, Amos 
B. Patterson, Fairfield Smith, George Fitch, Jonathan Crane, Isaac 
Orpin, Benjamin B. Sheffield, Elisha D. Harris, Alexander Patterson, 
Thomas Welton, James L. Van Buskirk, William Morton, and Nel- 
son Farnsworth, being the incorporators. Some time before this, 
a hundred pounds had been granted by the government for the 
erection of a breakwater at French Cross. 



178 KING'S COUNTY 

Among the letters of that remarkable man, the Rev. Jacob 
Bailey, so well known in Loyalist annals as the "Frontier Mission- 
ary" we have one to a private correspondent, which describes in 
the writer's usual graphic way his journey over land in 1782 from 
Cornwallis, where for some time he had been serving as mission- 
ary, to Annapolis Royal, where he was to enter on a new field. 
This letter is so valuable for the picture it gives of the hardships 
of travel in King's County at this early time that we reproduce 
part of it here. "We proposed", says Mr. Bailey, "to advance 
towards Annapolis on Tuesday, the 24th of July, but an excessive 
rain on Monday hindered our preparations, so that our departure 
was delayed till Wednesday morning, when we observed the fol- 
lowing order: A cart with two yoke of oxen, containing all our 
worldly possessions, began the procession, guarded by a couple of 
sprightly young fellows, who offered their services; a vehicle for 
the reception of Mrs. Bailey and her children, drawn by two horses, 
next appeared under the conduct of honest John [John McNamara, 
born in Pownalborough in 1758, died in Annapolis Royal in 1798. 
He was for many years a helper in Mr. Bailey's household, but 
during the last years of his life was S. P. G. Schoolmaster and 
Postmaster at Annapolis Royal]. Mrs. Burbidge, in her chaise, 
with the above mentioned persons, set off about seven, accompanied 
with near thirty people, of both sexes, on horseback, who attended 
us with cheerful solemnity, to the distance of fourteen miles on our 
journey. About eleven, we arrived at Marshall's, and with much 
difficulty provided an early dinner for our large company. 

"At one we parted with our friends. * * * The distressing 
ceremony of parting being over, Mrs. Bailey was seated with her 
little ones in the above mentioned machine, over which was 
stretched a covering of canvas, as a defence both from the vivid 
rays of the sun and the rain of heaven. We now entered a wilder- 
ness of vast extent, without a single human habitation for the 
space of eleven miles, the roads extremely rough, sheltered with 
tall forests, encumbered with rocks and deformed with deep 
sloughs ; and to render the scene still more disconsolate and dismal 



ROADS, TRAVELLING, DYKES 17& 

the wind howled among the trees, thick volumes of clouds rolled 
from the western hemisphere, and the rumble of thunder announced 
the horrors of an approaching tempest. We had still in company- 
six persons besides our own family, two of whom pushed forward 
with Betsey Nye and reached a publick house before the rain. Mr. 
Starr [David Starr, great-great-grandfather of the author of this 
book, who with his family, had been devoted parishioners of Mr. 
Bailey's] and your humble servant, left the carriages at the distance 
of four miles from the dwelling of one Potter, lately removed from 
Cornwallis, at which we arrived a little after sunset, just as the 
heavy shower was beginning to descend". 

After relating in detail the discomforts of the night, which 
they spent at Mr. Potter's, Mr. Bailey says that at five the next 
morning he and his party again started on their way. *'At the 
distance of a mile from our lodgings, I was invited to a christening, 
while the carriages proceeded. After the performance of this ex- 
ercise I took my leave of Mr. Starr and rode over the sandy, bar- 
ren (Aylesford) plains till I overtook our company". The inn 
Mr. Bailey calls "Marshall's" stood probably about two miles east 
of Berwick, and the eleven miles he travelled from there covered 
the distance from "Waterville to St. Mary's Church, in Aylesford. 
The (French) road he took, however, says Rev. Dr. Saunders, in 
commenting on this letter, lay to the south of the present post road, 
keeping the high land till it came to the head waters of the An- 
napolis river, at this point a mere brook. After crossing the river 
it kept on the south side till it reached a point opposite St. Mary's 
Church. "From the north side of the river the high land extends 
across the meadow so far that but a very short space of flat land 
intervenes. Here the French built a bridge across the river and 
made their road along the tongue of high land north, till it came 
to where the present post road is. From this point on to Bridgetown 
it kept nearly the line of the present post road. This would give 
the eleven miles of wilderness and just such roads as Mr. Bailey 
describes. The large pine trees, flattened on one side and placed 
side by side across the Annapolis River, and used for bridges, were 



180 KING'S COUNTY 

still to be seen as late as 1815. John Orpin, who was born in 
1708, distinctly remembers the logs of these French bridges". 

Until after the 19th century opened, travelling in the comity 
was almost exclusively on horseback, the women often sitting on 
pillions behind the men. Not infrequently as she rode, a woman 
carried in the saddle one child before her and one behind. When 
the first carriage was introduced into the county we do not know, 
but it is not at all unlikely that the chaise in which Mrs. Burbidge 
accompanied the departing Cornwallis clergyman towards An- 
napolis, may have been the first. About 1803, it is said, Mr. Benja- 
min Belcher imported a wagon from Boston. The vehicle cost 
fifty pounds, and was an object of the greatest interest to the 
King's County people at large. This wagon has been called the 
first one in the county, but from the preceding record it is clear 
that it could not have been. It was not until 1823 that the first 
wagon was brought into Kentville. In that year (if the date is 
correct) a tin peddler from New England came to the village with 
a white horse and a red wagon, bringing a load of tin-ware to sell. 
When he had disposed of his merchandise he sold his horse and 
wagon to Mr. James Delap Harris, and from miles around people 
came to see the remarkable "turn-out". After that, two-wheeled 
gigs and four-wheeled wagons gradually became common and horse- 
back travelling steadily declined. 

It must have been shortly before 1816 that a stage coach line 
was established between Halifax and Windsor, but it was not until 
1829, as we have seen, that the line was extended through Kent- 
ville to Annapolis. In 1816 Isaiah Smith drove the coach between 
Halifax and Windsor twice a week each way. In his advertise- 
ment of his line in the Almanac he announces that the fare be- 
tween these points is six dollars, and that the inside of his coach 
accommodates six passengers. In 1855 the Royal Western Stage 
Coach is advertised in the Almanac to leave Halifax for Windsor 
and Kentville, every morning at seven o'clock; for Windsor, Kent- 
ville, Aylesford, Bridgetown, and Annapolis, on Tuesday, Thurs- 
day, and Saturday mornings, at the same hour. From Windsor the 



ROADS, TRAVELLING, DYKES 181 

coach leaves for Halifax every morning after the arrival of the 
coach from Kentville ; for Kentville, and Annapolis, it leaves every 
afternoon, after the arrival of the coach from Halifax. From An- 
napolis it leaves for Kentville, Windsor, and Halifax, on Tuesday, 
Thursday, and Saturday mornings at nine o'clock. The coach is 
advertised to connect with the steamers running from Windsor and 
Annapolis to St. John, New Brunswick, Portland, Me., and Bos- 
ton. Extra coaches were dispatched on the arrival of steamers, 
when the travel was especially heavy. The old stage-coach days 
in the county stopped in the autumn of 1869. The shrill scream 
of the engine as it tore across the silent Grand Pre, and over the 
green dykes between Wolfville and Kentville, sounded the death 
knell of Jehuism, — slow travelling, good fellowship, discomfort, pic- 
turesqueness and all. 

Writing in 1900 of the county as it was about the end of the 
first quarter of the 19th century, the late Dr. James Eatchford De- 
Wolf says : ' ' Travelling through the country was a very different 
matter then from the rapid transit of today. In 1828 the mail 
for Halifax (carried on horseback) was due weekly, on Wednesday 
at ten in the forenoon, it having been dispatched from Halifax on 
Monday, at 2 P. M., more than forty-four hours before. Now there 
are two mails daily, which come in one-tenth of the time. At that 
time there were but two post-masters in what is now King 's County, 
and I believe there were none at all between Kentville and An- 
napolis. In 1829 a stage coach commenced to run from Halifax 
to Annapolis, three times a week in summer and twice a week in 
winter. The time of leaving Halifax was five in the morning, from 
May until August, six in the morning from September until Feb- 
ruary, and at daylight from February until May. The fare from 
Halifax to Annapolis was ten dollars, and the journey occupied 
the best part of two days. The weight of baggage allowed was but 
twenty pounds, all in excess of that being charged at the discre- 
tion of the agent. Postage was then regulated by distance, single 
letters must be on one piece of paper, but with no limit as to weight. 
Envelopes were unknown, and stamps were not dreamed of". 



182 KING'S COUNTY 

"Previous to 1869", said Dr. Henry Chipman, some years ago, 
to an audience in Lower Horton, "our railroad stopped at Wind- 
sor. Before that travelling was done by private carriages, or 
by the mail coach, which ran daily between Windsor and An- 
napolis carrying Her Majesty's mail. Four and six horses were 
driven. Fresh horses were 'hitched up' for the start at Kentville 
and Windsor, and relays were kept at the half-way house on Hor- 
ton Mountain. The drivers for many years were Harry Kilcup 
and Walsh. Excellent whips they were, and when the roads were 
good they drove like Jehu. Pleasant it was in fine summer weather 
to sit beside the driver on the top of the coach and bowl away, 
up hill and down. When the roads were breaking up in the spring, 
however, it was not so pleasant. When I was a student at King's 
College, Windsor, I often travelled by coach, and I well remember 
driving through Lower Horton when the wheels were sinking down 
to the hubs and we passengers were obliged to turn to and help 
pry them out with fence-poles. One cold December, when the roads 
were hard and rough, a hind wheel smashed and down came the 
coach. One of the inside passengers began to extricate himself by 
tearing away the lining of the coach, when Walsh, addressing him 
in anything but parliamentary language ordered him to stop and 
wait till he was let out. The passenger did not stop, and when 
he climbed out, the driver saw that it was Dr. Charles Tupper, 
now Sir Charles Tupper, Bart., a politician, high in authority then, 
as now. It was wonderful to see how quickly Walsh changed his 
tune". 

The first act to incorporate a railway system in Nova Scotia 
passed the legislature, March 31, 1853. This act proposed a trunk 
railway from Halifax to the frontier of New Brunswick, with 
branches extending eastward to Pictou Harbour, and westward to 
Victoria Beach, or some other place in the county of Annapolis 
having navigable communication with the Bay of Fundy. In 1865, 
^66, and '67, acts were passed incorporating the Windsor and An- 
napolis railway. In 1868 and '69, acts were passed authorizing the 
appraising, assessing, and paying of damages in King's County for 



ROADS, TRAVELLING, DYKES 183 

the property that had been taken by the railway. In 1869 the 
road was opened from Windsor to Annapolis. In 1887 the Central 
Valley Kailway Company was incorporated, and in the fall of 1890 
this road, from Kentville to Kingsport, was opened for travel and 
freight. In 1892 it was sold to the Dominion Atlantic Railway 
Company, which owns and operates it still. 

For many years until the present, the Dominion Atlantic rail- 
way has been under the efficient management of Mr. Percy Gifkins, 
a resident of Kentville, he having succeeded the late Mr. Kenneth 
Sutherland as manager. Mr. Sutherland's immediate predecessor 
in the management of the road was Mr. Peter Innes, at the present 
time and for many years one of the most progressive agriculturists 
and business men in King's County. Mr. Innes was born in Thurso, 
Scotland, in 1840, and was trained in railway management in the 
head offices of the North British Railway Company, one of the 
largest railway corporations in the British Isles. In 1871 he came 
to Nova Scotia to organize the financial affairs of the Windsor and 
Annapolis railway, and the following year, succeeded Mr. Vernon 
Smith as general manager of the, road. The railway was a con- 
tractor's line, imperfectly constructed and poorly equipped, with 
s,t that time a very scant and inadequate traffic, and for a number 
of years his energies were taxed to the utmost to keep the line run- 
ning, and to find money to maintain the track and provide suffi- 
cient rolling stock. Later on, to complicate his difficulties, the 
Dominion Government cancelled the contract under which the com- 
pany had leased the Windsor branch and run their trains into 
Halifax, and then followed two or three years of strenuous effort 
on his part to keep the Windsor and Annapolis road open on its 
own meagre earnings and to carry on litigation against the govern- 
ment. Eventually the branch was restored and the government 
was amerced in damages. Easier times followed, and Mr. Innes' 
attention was thenceforth directed to the development of the traffic 
and the general improvement of the line. In 1889 he resigned the 
managership on account of ill health, since when he has resided on 
his farm at^Coldbrook, devoting himself mainly to agricultural 
pursuits. 



184 KING'S COUNTY 

In 1784 monthly packets between Falmouth, Hants Comity, and 
New York, via Halifax, were first established, and it is unlikely 
that any regular communication between Nova Scotia and the out- 
side world existed before that time. For a long time after the in- 
troduction of steamboats into the Bay of Fundy, small steamers 
plied regularly between Windsor and St. John, New Brunswick, 
but with the opening of the railway all steamers from New Bruns- 
wick made Annapolis Eoyal their Nova Scotia terminal port. 

As early as December, 1760, Hon. Jonathan Belcher, President 
of the Council, appealed to the Lords of Trade to allow the New 
England planters to have help from the Acadians that remained in 
the province in rebuilding the partially destroyed dykes. "In the 
month of August", writes Mr. Belcher, *'the late Governor (Law- 
rence) having returned from Liverpool, made a progress into these 
settlements, where after having regulated several matters, the great 
objects of his attention were the dykes, of which the breach made 
in that of the river Canard, in the township of Cornwallis, as it was 
the greatest, was his first care. For this purpose the inhabitants, 
with their cattle and carriages, together with those hired from 
Horton at their own expense, were joined with some of the provin- 
cial troops and Acadians, who were best acquainted with works 
of this kind, to make a collection of the necessary materials to re- 
pair the breach. A considerable quantity was accordingly got 
ready, when the innundation, usual at this time of the year, put a 
stop to the work for this season. However, the materials are all 
secured against the next undertaking, and care was immediately 
taken to protect as much of the dykes in this and the neighboring 
townships as would inclose land sufficient to raise bread corn for 
them the next year, except in Falmouth, where the upland is in 
very good condition for that purpose. As the perfect establishment 
of the settlements depends in a very great degree on the repairs 
of the dykes, for the security of the marsh lands, from whence the 
support of the inhabitants will become easy and plentiful, necessary 
measures for effecting this great point have been fully considered, 
and I humbly conceive that the dykes may be put into very good 



ROADS, TRAVELLING, DYKES 185 

condition, if with your Lordships' approbation one hundred of the 
French inhabitants may be employed in different parts of the Prov- 
ince to assist and instruct in their repairs, the new settlers having 
come from a country in which such works are wanting". 

In June, 1761, Mr. Belcher again earnestly petitioned the gov- 
ernment that the new settlers might have help from the French, 
and by 1765 the need of such assistance was felt by the planters 
themselves to be so imperative that on their behalf Judge Isaac 
Deschamps, at Windsor, drew up the following strong plea : 

"To His Excellency, Montague Wilmot Esquire, Captain Gen- 
eral and Governor in chief in and over His Majesty's Province of 
Nova Scotia and its Dependencies, Colonel in His Majesty's ser- 
vice and commanding the Troops in said Province. The Memorial 
of the inhabitants of King's County Humbly Sheweth: 

''That the french accadians who have hitherto been stationed 
in this county, have been of great use as labourers in assisting the 
carrying on our Business in agriculture and Improvements in gen- 
eral, but particularly in the repairing and making Dykes, a work 
which they are accustomed to and Experienced in, and we find that 
without their further assistance many of us cannot Continue our Im- 
provements, nor plough nor sowe our Lands nor finish the Dykeing 
still required to secure our lands from salt water, and being con- 
vinced from Experience that unless those Dyke Lands are enclosed 
we cannot with certainty raise Bread for our Subsistence. 

''Your Memorialists therefore Humbly Pray Your Excellency 
will be pleased to take this matter of so much consequence to us 
into Consideration, to Permit the accadians to remain with us the 
Ensueing summer, and to continue to them the allowance of Pro- 
visions as hitherto, which enables them to Labour at much lower 
wages than if obliged to purchase Provisions, especially at the high 
Price they now bear in the Country, and which will tend greatly 
to the Encouragement and success of these infant settlements. 

"And your Memorialists as in duty bound will ever pray, etc. 
March 23rd, 1765. 



186 KING'S COUNTY 



John Burbidge 
Saml. "Willoughby 
Samuel Beckwith 
William Canady 
Handley Chipman 



In behalf of the Inhabitants of Cornwallis 



Elisha Lothrop 

Silas Crane 

Nathan DeWolf j. In behalf of the Inhabitants of Horton 

Robert Dennison 

WiUiam Welch 



I. Deschamps 
Moses Delesdernier 



In behalf of the Inhabitants of Windsor 



W. Tonge In behalf of King's County 

Henry Denny Denson \ 

Joseph Bennett I j^ ^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ Township of Famouth 

Abel J. Michner ( 

Joseph Wilson ) 

Joseph Baley ] j^ ^jghalf of the Township of Newport" 

Benj. Sanford J 

That this petition was successful is almost certain from the fact 
that a considerable number of Acadians were still kept in the 
county, who in 1768, as we learn from dispatches between the 
home and provincial authorities, and from correspondence between 
Lieut. Governor Francklin and Isaac Deschamps, took an unquali- 
fied oath of allegiance to the British crown. 

In continuing the important work of dyking the marshes, that 
the Acadians had so long pursued, the New England planters fol- 
lowed closely the methods of their predecessors. The French had 
reclaimed many squares or oblong pieces of marsh by throwing 
up dykes along the river channels, and from the river, on two sides, 
to the upland. In Cornwallis, however, the New England planters 
not only built dykes beside the rivers, but before long threw up 
substantial aboiteaus across the streams. "The first of these cross 



ROADS, TRAVELLING. DYKES 187 

dykes we find", says Dr. Brechin, "is near Steam Mill Village, al- 
though some claim that the Tobin Dyke on the Isaac Reid place 
was built first. The second was at Upper Dyke Village, the third 
was across the Middle Dyke, and the fourth ran from Hamilton's 
Corner to Church Street. This last was evidently the masterpiece 
of the new dyke builders; it is so scientifically constructed that 
there can be no doubt that the builders of it were fairly skilled in 
mechanical engineering. These dykes served a double purpose, to 
keep out the tides and to be available as roads. In each of these 
cross dykes, there can be no doubt, was an aboiteau or sluice. As 
each successive dyke was built the old sluice was destroyed". 

"The first dykes", writes Dr. Benjamin Rand, "were made by 
the construction of long ridges of sods, sufficiently high to keep out 
the tides. The New England planters, however, shut out the riv- 
ers by the constructions of aboiteaus. These were sluice-ways, with 
gates swinging outward at the bottom of the channel, with a dyke 
wide enough for a road, built above. After two or three years of 
dyking, the salt would be freed from the marsh soil, and the al- 
luvial deposit was so deep that it would for many successive years 
yield two or three tons of hay to the acre, without fertilization, or 
cultivation of any sort. In the autumn, a month or two after the 
hay was gathered, the dyked lands would afford aftermath for the 
grazing of cattle and horses. From the first, the King's County 
dykes were built by common labour, and the dyked lands, while 
belonging to individuals, were treated in many respects as a com- 
mon field. The management of the dykes naturally led to the crea- 
tion of special officers unknown in New England, whose duties 
were limited to this part of the planters' new possessions; such of- 
ficers were Dyke Commissioners, Assizers, Branders, Dyke Drivers, 
etc. Originally, of course, the dykes were mown and raked by 
hand, today almost all the labour on them is done by machinery. 
Putside the running dykes the salt hay was and still is piled upon 
straddles. This coarse hay furnished inferior fodder for cattle, 
and was largely used in winter to mix with fresh hay, and for bed- 
ding in the stables and barns". 



188 KING'S COUNTY 

Concerning the exact location of some of the Cornwallis dykes, 
Dr. Rand has elsewhere written: ''On the Habitant river there was 
probably a crossing of an early date at Sheffield's Mills. Here a 
mill-dam was afterward built for saw and grist mills. Lower down, 
at 'Randville', there were fords, but no aboiteaus. At one time an 
aboiteau existed on the site of the present railway bridge across 
the river. This was probably the first aboiteau made across the 
Habitant. Later, an aboiteau was built near Borden's wharf, be- 
tween Lower Canard and Habitant. The chief aboiteau of the river 
has long been at the present crossing of the highway from Canard 
to Canning. About three years ago a new aboiteau was built behind 
the Baptist meeting house in Canning. Fruitless attempts were 
made to construct it a few rods further down, the failure being due 
to the existence of a sandstone bottom on the north side of the 
river. A large area of dyke land was lately reclaimed on the north 
side of the river, a short distance above Kingsport. The tide, how- 
ever, proved so powerful that a section of it had to be abandoned. 
The dykes on the Habitant river are thus partly dependent on run- 
ning dykes exclusively, and partly on running dykes in conjunc- 
tion with aboiteaus. The Cornwallis river has always had running 
dykes on each side. From Wolfville to Kentville an aboiteau, how- 
ever, is now proposed at the old French ford at Starr's Point. The 
Pereau river has never had but one aboiteau". 

The chief dykes of the county are known as the "Wellington, 
Grand, and Union dykes, in Cornwallis, and the Grand Pre and 
"Wickwire dykes, in Horton. The building of the first of these was 
the greatest dyke building enterprise the county has ever known. 
This famous dyke was begun in 1817 and was finished in 1825. 
The people of Cornwallis, says Murdoch, "at an expense of about 
ten thousand pounds had built a new (the Wellington) Dyke, en- 
closing more than a thousand acres of marsh redeemed from the 
sea. They had been five years on the work and it was nearly com- 
pleted, when in August, 1822, the sea broke in and destroyed it. 
They were in the habit of working at it all night, but on this occa- 
sion the workmen, in consequence of the great fatigue they had 



ROADS, TRAVELLING, DYKES 189 

undergone, a few hours before the event occurred had retired". 
Undismayed by the calamity they promptly went to work again and 
restored the dyke. "I subsequently saw it", continues Murdoch, 
''under a crop of grain, covering apparently the whole extent of 
the marsh". The expense of the dyke is said to have been not 
less than £20,708. When the work was done the event was cele- 
brated with much festivity. In 1823 eight hundred pounds was 
voted by the legislature toward building the dyke. 

In 1830- '31 the legislature appointed Commissioners to report on 
the advantages which might accrue to the proprietors of the Grand 
Dyke and Union Dyke in Cornwallis, by the building of the Welling- 
ton Dyke. Between 1836 and 1862 several acts were passed by the 
legislature, relative to the New or Wickwire Dyke, in Horton. Of the 
Great Horton Dyke, the Grand Pre, Dr. Henry Chipman says : ' ' Our 
dyke is a monument to the skill, industry, enterprise, and thorough- 
ness of the Acadian farmers. But once during the two centuries 
since they built it, has the 'turbulent tide' made a breach in the work 
and flooded the land. The 'Saxby tide', in the autumn of 1869, 
made a clean sweep over it, carrying masses of it out bodily. The 
whole three thousand acres were flooded, cattle were drowned, and 
'Long Island' became an island in reality. The salt left on the land 
destroyed the crop of grass for three years ' '. 



CHAPTER Xn 
CHIEF INDUSTRIES OF THE COUNTY 

In previous chapters we have given some aeeoimt of the chief 
industries of the Acadians, especially of their dyke building, and 
have shown how this last industry was continued by their succes- 
sors. The first care of the New England planters when they came 
to the county was, of course, to provide proper shelter for their 
families, and the next to plant corn, flax, and roots in the already 
well cultivated fields, and from the dyked marshes and the uplands 
to gather hay for their cattle and sheep for the next winter's use. 
As early as December 12, 1760, Mr. Jonathan Belcher writes the 
Lords of Trade that already a thousand tons of hay have been 
gathered in Horton, five hundred in Cornwallis, and six hundred in 
Falmouth. From New England, the planters brought with them 
stock, farming utensils and household goods, and the seed for future 
crops. Whatever sorts of plows, harrows, hoes, scythes, and rakes 
they had been accustomed to use in New England they, of course, 
also used here. They had flails for threshing and sieves for win- 
nowing grain. In their houses they had spinning wheels for flax 
and wool, and hand looms for weaving linen and woolen cloth. In 
building their houses and barns they gave each other material help. 
In convenient places they set up blacksmiths' forges, where carts 
and farming utensils were mended and oxen and horses brought 
to be shod. Here and there they located carpenters' shops, where 
much of their household furniture and many of the common utensils 
they used were made. On the brooks they built grist mills, saw mills, 
and carding mills, and in various places established brick-yards and 
tanneries. The French had found the soil and climate of Nova 
Scotia well adapted for fruit raising and had set out small orchards, 
from which they gathered considerable crops of apples; they no 



CHIEF INDUSTRIES 191 

doubt had given some attention also to the growing of pears, 
cherries, currants, and plums. This fruit industry the New England 
planters continued, and with the ripening of their apple crops they 
set up cider presses as the French before them likewise had done. 

Regarding the county's subsequent agriculture and fruit rais- 
ing a good deal must be said. In November, 1789, a society for pro- 
moting agriculture was formed in Halifax, with Hon. Richard 
Bulkeley, president; Hon. Henry Newton, vice-president; Mr. Law- 
rence Hartshorne, treasurer; and Mr. James Clark, secretary; and 
the 10th of December of the same year the "King's County Agricul- 
tural Society", which has had a continuous history to the present 
time, began its career. The wide purpose of this latter society was 
declared to be "the better improvement of Husbandry, encourage- 
ment of Manufactures, cultivation of the Social Virtues, acquirement 
of Useful Knowledge, and to promote the good order and well being^ 
of the Community to which we belong". The first officers of the soci- 
ety were : Jonathan Crane, president ; John Thomas Hill, vice-presi- 
dent; James Noble Shannon, treasurer; James FuUerton, secretary; 
David Denison, steward. The society still exists and holds meetings,, 
and in 1889 celebrated its centennial by a dinner at the American 
House, "Wolfville. The minute books from the beginning are care- 
fully preserved and these give us the early membership in full. In. 
the list of members, as we should expect, are the names, most of 
them familiar in the county still: Allison, Avery, Bacon, Bennett,, 
Bigelow, Bishop, Borden, Calkin, Crane, Crowe, Denison, DeWolf, 
Elderkin, Fillis, Fitch, Fuller, Fullerton, Gilmore, Harding, Harris, 
Hill, Johnson, Laird, Leonard, Palmer, Rathburn, Reid, Scott, 
Shannon, Starr, Woodworth. One of the first acts of this society 
was the appointment of an agent in Halifax, for "the vending of 
beef, etc.," and the appointment in the county of inspectors, whose 
business it should be to see "that cattle sent to the agent were fit 
for the market". It was further provided that when a number of 
cattle were ready to be driven to Halifax, they should be divided 
into lots and sent, "by ballot, in turn". 

That the diversified objects for which the society was founded 



192 KING'S COUNTY 

were all conscientiously kept in mind its ancient records make 
clear; these show that it concerned itself with the buying of 
imported stock and seeds, making experiments in fertilizing land 
with marsh mud, lime, and plaster, testing new or strange crops, 
holding fairs and ploughing matches, fencing the burying ground, 
buying a pall for use at funerals, instituting Sunday schools and 
paying teachers in the same, founding a circulating library, and 
frequently recommending to the Town Meeting and Court of Ses- 
sions, needed general reforms. A newspaper report of the centennial 
celebration from which we have drawn the facts given above, goes 
on to say that "these recommendations generally met a ready 
response, and it is only within a few years that a memorial from the 
society to the Municipal Council led to the purchase of a Poor 's Farm 
for the township of Horton, which has resulted in decreasing taxa- 
tion and in greatly improving the condition of the poor". 

In 1843, the Society had branches in Horton, Cornwallis and 
Aylesford. The Horton branch had as officers, Thomas Andrew 
Strange DeWolf, president; James Harris and Charles W. H. 
Harris, secretaries; the Cornwallis branch had, Hon. John Morton, 
president; Dr. Charles Cottnam Hamilton, secretary; the Aylesford 
branch had, Kev. Henry Lambeth Owen, president; James D. Van 
Buskirk, secretary. 

In 1898, no less than nine agricultural societies existed in 
King's County, their total membership being 677. The only other 
counties in the province having a larger number of such societies 
were, Pictou with fifteen, and Colchester with ten. Among the 
many importations into the county of new varieties of agricultural 
products one notable one must be mentioned here. This is the 
"Bluenose" potato, imported for the Agricultural Society about 
1820, by the Earl of Dalhousie. It is from this importation that 
the name "Bluenose" humourously given Nova Scotians is 
believed to have come. 

The famous "Letters of Agricola", which appeared anony- 
mously in the Halifax Acadian Recorder, between July 25th and 
December 26th, 1818, gave a great stimulus to intelligent farming 



CHIEF INDUSTRIES 193 

in King's County, as elsewhere throughout the province. In con- 
sequence of suggestions these letters contained, agricultural 
societies were organized in various counties of Nova Scotia, and 
farming generally was put on a higher plane. The author of the 
letters was Mr. John Young, born at Falkirk, Scotland, in Sep- 
tember, 1773, and educated at Glasgow University, one of whose 
sons was the Hon. Sir William Young, Kt., ninth Chief Justice of 
Nova Scotia. In the last quarter of the 19th century a nephew and 
namesake of Sir William lived in Cornwallis and very successfully 
farmed there. 

To promote agriculture a Grange movement was organized 
throughout Canada about 1878 or '79. In the Maritime Provinces 
it began in Colchester county, from there spreading rapidly 
through Hants, King 's, Annapolis, Pictou, and Cumberland counties ; 
and in New Brunswick, through Westmoreland, Albert, and York 
counties. In each of these counties was a district grange, and in 
the Maritime Provinces at large was a Maritime Provincial Grange, 
sending delegates to the Dominion Grange, which met annually at 
Toronto and Ottawa. In King's County there were strong sub- 
granges at Pereau, Sheffield's Mills, Port Williams, and Grand Pre. 
The grange system did good work in Nova Scotia for several years, 
especially in promoting a system of cash buying among the farmers 
and in abolishing the long credit and longer price system of the 
country stores. Finally, however, dissensions arose in the manage- 
ment of the granges; at headquarters in Ontario politics were 
allowed too much sway, and in country places grange stores were 
not managed on the best business principles. The grange move- 
ment, consequently, after a few years entirely ceased. 

The yield of wheat and rye in King's County in 1813, was as 
follows : of wheat, in Aylesf ord 2,407^ bushels ; in Cornwallis 1,844 
bushels; in Horton 790 bushels; in Parrsborough 158 bushels. Of 
rye, in Cornwallis 1,812 bushels ; in Aylesford 643 bushels ; in Hor- 
ton 230 bushels; in Parrsborough 190 bushels. In 1900 King's 
County produced 829,922 bushels of potatoes and 57,658 tons of 
hay. The value of its field crops was $777,676; forest products 



194 KING'S COUNTY 

$168,517; dairy products $174,557; fruits and vegetables $373,414; 
eggs $34,455 ; wool $11,521 ; furs $473. Of live stock it sold 196,944 
animals. In 1901 King's had 131,320 acres of improved, and 177,178 
acres of unimproved, land. Of forest lands it had 73,688 acres ; of 
pasture land 91,247 acres; of land in field crops, 68,173 acres; in 
vegetables and small fruits, 990 acres. In 1889, according to a 
newspaper article, the inhabitants of Gaspereau raised and manu- 
factured into pickles, 15,000 bushels of cucumbers. In 1890 from 
the cultivated bogs of Aylesford some 400 barrels of cranberries 
were gathered, in 1898, this crop was almost ten times as great, 

April 14, 1832, an act was passed by the legislature encourag- 
ing the importation of improved breeds of cattle into Nova Scotia^ 
and it is likely that the interest in thoroughbred stock, which led 
to the passing of this act, was strong among intelligent King's 
County men. In the last half of the 19th century, at least, much 
attention was given in the county to the importation and breeding^ 
of foreign stock. One of the most noted stock-raisers has been Mr» 
Herbert Stairs of Cornwallis. In 1898 two Dairy Companies existed 
in King's, the Acadia Dairy Company, Limited, at Grand Pre, of 
which Charles H. R. Starr was president, and S. Avery Bowser, 
secretary; and the Aylesford Creamery Company, at Aylesford, of 
which John C. West was president, and N. J. Bowlby, secretary. 

*'The Annapolis Valley", says a late writer truthfully, "is one 
of the favoured regions of the world for fruit culture. Situated in 
the western portion of the Province, comprising Annapolis, King's,, 
and a part of Hants counties, it is sheltered from the cold north 
winds by a range of hills known as the North Mountain, extending^ 
from Digby Gut to historic Blomidon, while a parallel mountain 
range, some eight or ten miles distant, shuts out the fogs of the 
Atlantic Ocean from this charming country. A watershed about 
midway of the valley divides the source of the Annapolis river 
from that of the Cornwallis, the former running fifty miles west, 
to the Annapolis Basin. These two small rivers, with a hundred 
rippling brooks and gushing springs, water the roots of tens of 
thousands of fruitful trees. The soil varies from a, yielding sand 



CHIEF INDUSTRIES 195 

to a clayey loam, and strange though it seems, in all its varieties 
is wonderfully adapted to the growth of fruits. All up and down 
the Valley, orchards of apple, plum, and pear trees, with an occa- 
sional peach and quince tree, cluster round the cosy farmhouses,^ 
while strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and every other 
variety of the smaller fruits and berries, grow plentifully from the 
fertile soil". In June the Valley from end to end is like a sump- 
tuous garden, "in that month every tree is a mass of blossoms, tha 
air is laden with perfume, and the hum of bees fills the air witL 
gentle music". When the Acadians came to Minas they soon dis- 
covered, as we have said, the remarkable adaptation of the King s 
County soil and climate to apple growing, and so they set out small 
orchards, but of comparatively insignificant fruit. How early tlie 
New England planters began to give special attention to the raising^ 
of apples we do not know, but from the beginning of the 19th century^ 
at least, the townships of Cornwallis, Horton and Aylesford, have all 
raised a great deal of this fruit. Among early settlers in the county 
several persons have been mentioned as being specially interested 
and as interesting others in the cultivation of apples. One of these 
was Col. John Burbidge, who is said to have introduced the ** Non- 
pareil" apple into the county from England, about 1775. A pear 
grown in Cornwallis down to a recent time was known, after Col. 
Burbidge, as the ''Burbidge pear". It was round, not large, and 
and was sweet and well flavoured. 

In the first quarter of the 19th century an intelligent man, a 
Mr. Hugh Pudsey, came from England to Horton, where he married 
Roxalina, daughter of Benjamin Cleveland, and sister of Mrs. Cor- 
nelius Fox. He was a man of scientific tastes and had a good 
library, and he imported from England grape vines and other fruit 
scions, rare in the province. Others who helped promote fruit cul- 
ture in the county were the Rev. John Wiswall, long settled in 
Aylesford and Wilmot, and Bishop Charles Inglis, who is said to 
have introduced here several fine varieties of apples, among them 
the beautiful yellow "Bishop Pippin", now commonly known as 
*'Bellefleur". Among men who in later times have been deeply and 



196 KING'S COUNTY 

intelligently interested in fruit raising in the county have been, the 
Hon. Charles Eamage Prescott, who between 1830 and '35 intro- 
duced the Gravenstein apple and the Ribston Pippin, Dr. Charles 
Cottnam Hamilton, Mr. Samuel Starr and his son. Major Robert 
William Starr, Mr. John Edward Starr, Mr. Leander Rand, and Mr. 
Ralph Samuel Eaton, whose wonderful "Hillcrest Orchards", in 
Cornwallis (now owned by a stock company), of apples, pears, 
plums, quinces, and cherries, are known to fruit raisers all over the 
continent. By 1870 every farm in the fruit-growing sections of 
Annapolis, King's, and Hants counties had on it many fruit-bearing 
trees. The complete apple yield of the Annapolis Valley for that 
year was a hundred thousand barrels, of which twelve thousand 
were exported, chiefly to England. The market for Annapolis 
Valley apples, at first was chiefly the United States, but about 
1870- '75, exportation to the English markets began. In 1892 the 
orchards of the Valley are said to have covered 25,000 acres, and to 
have produced 300,000 barrels, about half of which were sent 
abroad. Since that time orchard development has gone steadily 
on, the crops, shipped almost exclusively to England, being at 
present much greater, and the apples much finer, ihan ever before. 
In 1901 the county had in orchards 12,944 acres, the adjoining 
counties of Annapolis and Hants, next to King's the largest fruit 
producing counties in the province, having respectively, but 6,264, 
and 3,280 acres. Besides apples, pears and plums continue to be 
widely cultivated, the "Burbank" being the most commonly grown 
plum. 

A horticultural society seems to have been formed in King's 
County about 1825 to '28 ; in the latter year, we find as its officers : 
Hon. Charles Ramage Prescott, president; John Whidden, vice- 
president; Ebenezer F. Harding, corresponding secretary; Caleb 
Handley Rand, recording secretary ; and James Delap Harris, treas- 
urer. This society is not remembered to day, and it is thought it 
must have had a very brief career. A Fruit Growers' Association 
and International Show Society of Nova Scotia was organized at 
Halifax, March 11, 1863, with a few members. Its first meeting iot 



CHIEF INDUSTRIES 197 

business was held in Kentville, July 3rd of the same year, Charles 
Cottnam Hamilton, M, D., being then elected president. At Dr. Ham- 
ilton's death in 18S0 Major Robert William Starr became president, 
and following him have been as presidents: Avard Longley, 
1883- '84; Rev. J. R. Hart, 1885-'87; Henry Chipman, M. D., 1888- '90; 
J. W. Bigelow, 1890- '02; S. Spurr, 1903; Peter Innes, 1904; Ralph 
Samuel Eaton, 1905; John Donaldson, 1906- '07; Major Robert Wil- 
liam Starr, 1908. The annual meetings of the society were held at 
Wolfville until 1901, the places of meeting after that being sucees- 
sivelj!- ]\Iiddleton, Bridgewater, Windsor, Annapolis, Wolfville, Ber- 
wick, and Middleton. To the teaching and general stimulus given by 
this society, the fruit industry of the Annapolis Valley owes 
much of its late remarkable success. In 1873 an act was passed by 
the legislature for the better protection of growing fruit in King's. 
A School of Horticulture, having affiliation with Acadia University, 
for some years existed at Wolfville. At the close of 1898 this 
school, then under the direction of Mr. F. C. Sears, reported sixty- 
two students, fifty-seven of whom were from Nova Scotia. 

When the distribution of lands to the New England planters 
was made, two reservations were set apart in Cornwallis, and no 
doubt two or three in Horton, for mills. The first Cornwallis mills 
were, Knight's, afterward Sheffield's, and one at Port Williams 
(Terry's Creek), probably first owned by James Wood. At Shef- 
field's mill a hundred acres were allowed for a mill-pond, though 
so much was never used. A little later, Barnaby's grist mill, after- 
wards Killam's carding mill; Bishop's mill at Lakeville; Garrett's 
mill near Steam Mill Village; Obed Benjamin's mill at White Rock; 
and Lane's mill on the Gaspereau river, were all established. In 
1829 there were on the Habitant river, two grist mills and a carding 
mill; at Canning, Harrington's tide mill for grinding wheat and 
rye, in conjunction with which was a mill for grinding oats; and 
on or near the Pereau river, a mill of some kind owned by Nathan 
Loonier. At this period there were in the county in all, eleven grist 
mills and sixteen saw mills. A little later, Thomas Dickie had a 
carding mill somewhere in Lower Canard. Of tanneries there were 



198 KING^S COUNTY 

Chase's at Lakeville, Lowden's at Centreville, Phinney's in Kent- 
ville, Bragg 's under the "Gallows hill", and probably Johnson's at - 
Wolfville. 

The lumber interests of the county have always been eonsid- 
efable. In 1900, as we have seen, the total value of forest products 
was $168,517; of the various woods cut and exported then, pine 
holding the first place. The most considerable lumber merchant 
in the county for the past twenty or thirty years has been Mr, S. P. 
Benjamin. His ownership of lumber woods and his large shipments 
of lumber have given him a conspicuous place in the county's long 
roll of enterprising men. 

At various points in King's County from early times a good 
deal of shipbuilding has gone on. At Scots Bay, Hall's Harbor, 
Baxter's Harbor, Black Rock, and French Cross, many vessels have 
been built, while at Canning and Kingsport there have been a great 
many more. It is said that the first vessel built in the county was a 
schooner rigged craft, of about forty tons register, built at the Corn- 
wallis Town Plot about 1790. To the grand event of its launching 
people came in all directions from thirty miles around, and the day 
throughout Cornwallis was made one of much festivity. The first 
ship-builder of importance was Ebenezer Bigelow, Sr., of Canning, 
who began to build vessels in 1800. His craft ranged in size from 
seventy to a hundred and fifty tons. The next was Elijah West, Sr., 
who at various points built vessels of a larger class still. In the 
spring of 1813, Mr. Handley Chipman built a brig of some two hun- 
dred tons on the Cornwallis river, near the bridge at Kentville. At 
the same place in 1846, James Edward DeWolf built a barque, 
which he called TliQ Kent. The first vessel built at Lower Horton 
(Horton Landing) was the schooner Nonpareil, built about 1848 or 
'50 for Arthur M. Wier and Capt. Joseph Rathbun. Mr. Wier 
owned the shipyard and the property round it, and lived in a two- 
story house, with elms shading it, near the wharf. From him the 
shipyard passed to Jacob Curry, who by and by sold it to J. B. 
North. Mr. North, in 1780, built the barque Kestrel, and after that 
three other barques and a brig. In the year ending September 30, 



CHIEF INDUSTRIES 199 

1866, there were built in the county, three barques, with a combined 
tonnage of 1,467; seven schooners, with a tonnage of 394; three 
brigantines, with a tonnage of 437 ; and three brigs with a tonnage 
of 794. 

In Canning, says a late writer, about the middle of the 19th cen- 
tury it was no uncommon sight to see two ships on stocks at the same 
time. From 1850 to '75 the chief ship-builders at this place were, 
Ebenezer Bigelow, John Northup, William Harris, and Charles 
Connors. At Scots bay the men building ships were Jacob Lockhart 
and Abraham Ells. At Kingsport, Benjamin and Isaac Bigelow and 
"W. H. Church were the chief builders, the Bigelow brothers also 
having a shipyard at Spencer's Island. At Baxter's Harbor, the 
builders were Amos Baxter and John Irvin. In 1883 Philip R. 
Crichton of Halifax, who had for some time been build- 
ing vessels in King's County, sold his interests to C. R. Burgess 
of Wolfville, and thereafter for some years Mr, Burgess built 
and owned more ships in the county than any one else. ''His 
splendid fleet of full rigged ships, among the largest ever 
built in Nova Scotia", were all built and launched at Kings- 
port. These were the Kammira, 1,885 tons, built in 1882; 
the Karoo, 1,900 tons, built in 1883; the Earl Burgess, 1,800 tons, 
built in 1887; the Queen, 1,894 tons, built in 1887; the King's County, 
2,071 tons, built in 1890 ; the Canada, 2,127 tons, built in 1891 ; the 
Golden Rod, built in 1892 ; and the Skoda, built in 1893. Launchings 
at Kingsport and elsewhere were always festive occasions and 
brought together great crowds of people, young and old. 

From the earliest settlement of the county, fishing has been 
carried on in Minas Basin and the rivers and along the Bay Shore. 
By the New England planters, seines were early stretched across the 
Habitant river for catching shad. In the Gaspereau river at certain 
seasons alewives or gaspereaux, and salmon, have always been plenti- 
ful. At Pereau, herring have been abundant. On the broad flats at 
Starr's Point and at the mouth of the Canard, weirs are annually 
placed for shad and other fish. In the mill-brook at Kentville, near 
its junction with the Cornwallis river, in the early spring, quantities 



200 KING'S COUNTY 

of smelts are caught. At Scots Bay, shad and herrings and at Hall's 
Harmor, salmon, abound. In 1861 there were engaged in fishing in 
the county six vessels, manned by twenty-eight men ; and fifty boats, 
manned by forty-three men; of nets and seines there were in all a 
hundred and forty-one. From time to time acts have been passed by 
the legislature regulating the King's County fisheries. 

The county's trade began in French times with the shipment 
of farm produce from Minas to Annapolis and Louisburg, and with 
the return of French imported merchandise from the latter place. 
At some period, we do not know precisely when, Joshua Mauger, 
an adventurous trader, the son of a London Jewish merchant, 
making Louisburg the centre of his business operations established 
"truck houses" at Piziquid, Grand Pre, and Annapolis, and smug- 
gling goods in large quantities from France sent them to these 
points and to the St. John River. He is said to have been not only 
a "prince of smugglers", but for years the great intermediary 
between the French government and the inhabitants of Acadia, both 
French and Indian, and next to the priest Le Loutre the most mis- 
chievous influence in Acadia with which English authority had to 
contend. The tomahawks and scalping knives in use among the 
Indians are said to have been brought from France largely by him, 
the French emissaries here distributing them to the dwellers in the 
forest. When Louisburg was first captured he returned for a short 
time to London, but after the founding of Halifax he came to Nova 
Scotia and established himself in the new capital of the province. 
In Halifax he obtained a license to distil rum for the fleet, and he 
was further successful in obtaining a grant of the greater part of 
"Cornwallis Island and Beach", a short distance from the town. 
He also formed a partnership with Messrs. Apthorp and Company 
of Boston to supply the government with almost all that was 
required for the support of the new settlement, the profits from the 
breadstuffs alone this firm imported, since they charged whatever 
they pleased, amounting annually to a very large sum. "When the 
French were expelled from Acadia it is probable he closed his 
business at Halifax, where among other valuable possessions he 



CHIEF INDUSTRIES 201 

owned three distilleries, and at once settled in London. There he 
secured a seat in Parliament, lived in princely style, married his 
only daughter to the Due de Brouillan, and May 4, 1792, died worth 
three hundred thousand pounds sterling. In connection with two 
places in these provinces his name still stands. These are, Mauger's 
Beach, near Halifax, and the town of Maugerville, on the St. John 
river. In 1780 Mr. Bulkeley, the cool headed Secretary of the 
province, estimated that in the thirty years since the founding of 
Halifax, through the smuggling of Mauger and others, fully four 
hundred thousand pounds currency had been lost to the treasury. 
Mauger's dishonest career in Halifax had, it is said, a most per- 
nicious effect in lowering the tone of commercial morals in the 
province for years after he left. "With the removal of the Acadians, 
of course, all trading operations in King's County, except about the 
fort at Piziquid, entirely ceased. 

Soon after the New England planters came they opened small 
general stores at Cornwallis and Horton Town Plots, and these 
stores in time came to have rivals at cross roads and in other con- 
venient small centres of population. Such stores as Chipman's, at 
Chipman's Corner, Buckley's, at Buckley's Corner, Dickie's, near 
the Baptist meeting-house corner in Canard, and others like them, 
which lasted until comparatively recent times, were survivals of 
these early established Cornwallis and Horton general stores. In 
time, Wolfville, Kentville, Canning, Kingsport, Billtown, Berwick; 
and on the bay shore. Hall's Harbor, Baxter's Harbor, Black Rock^ 
Harborville, and French Cross, became notable trading centres. 
Since the building of the railway, naturally trade has been greatest 
chiefly in the places near which the railway runs. These places are^ 
Grand Pre, Wolfville, Kentville, Waterville, Berwick, and Kingston. 
In the year ending Sept. 30, 1865, the value of products exported 
from Cornwallis was $134,684; from Horton was $35,827, In the 
following year, however, the figures were less. They were, for 
Cornwallis $125,109; for Horton $32,746, The products exported 
in 1865-6 comprised wood, fish, and hides to the United States, 
vegetables, to New Brunswick, potatoes to New Brunswick and 



^02 KING'S COUNTY 

Newfoundland, and fruit to New Brunswick. In the same year 
there were imported from the United States, tea, leather, hardware, 
earthenware, flour, and drugs and medicines. While the potato 
industry flourished, shipments of potatoes were frequent to the 
West Indies, return cargoes from West Indian ports being molasses, 
sugar, and rum. "Before the Windsor and Annapolis railway was 
built", says some one, "all poultry, pork, eggs, butter, etc., were 
trucked away to Halifax, by the farmer himself, who in addition to 
his own expenses and those of his team was obliged to spend three 
or four days in marketing a load that now would not fill one corner 
of a railway ear. Cattle and great flocks of lambs were driven to 
market, the driver footing it after them, often with blistered feet, 
and not seldom far into the night, so as to be in Halifax at an early 
hour the next morning". For a good while, potatoes were the most 
important product of the Annapolis Valley, gradually, however, 
apples came to take their place. 

"The pioneer advocate of Boards of Trade in King's County", 
says Mr. Peter Innes, "was Mr. George E. Calkin, and it was owing 
to his spirited and persistent efforts, ably seconded by those of the 
late Mr. Melville Q. DeWolfe, that the Kentville Board was founded 
in 1886. Subsequently, Boards of Trade were established in Wolf- 
ville. Canning, Berwick, and Hantsport. While these Boards 
admirably served the interests of their respective towns it was felt 
by many that the important agricultural and rural population of 
the county should have a directly representative organization of 
their own to promote, foster, and protect their varied industries 
and interests. Accordingly, in 1895, the King's County Board of 
trade was incorporated, under the provisions of a general Dominion 
Act respecting Boards of Trade, W. H. Chase being elected president 
and the late Dr. Frank H. Eaton, secretary. This board, which is 
the only County Board of Trade in the Dominion of Canada, con- 
cerns itself with all matters affecting the progress and prosperity of 
the Province and the Dominion. Its membership, in addition to the 
County Councillors from every ward, includes the leading repre- 
sentatives of the industries and trades of the County, and its 



CHIEF INDUSTRIES 203 

activities have been a distinct factor in the County's progress and 
development. Its regular quarterly meetings are held alternately 
at different important centres". The successive presidents of this 
Board of Trade, have been: W. H. Chase,, 1895-6; Peter Innes, 
1897-1902; C. 0. Allan, 1903-'05; J. A. Kinsman, 1906; A. McMahon, 
1907; W. H. Woodworth, 1908; T. H. Morse, 1909. Its secretaries 
have been: Frank H. Eaton, 1895- '97; Charles F. Rockwell, 1898- 
'99; Ralph S. Eaton, 1900- '03; H. G. Harris, 1904; J. Howe Cox, 
1905; W. B. Burgess, 1906- '08; M. K. Ells, 1909. 

King's County has had a few small manufacturing interests, 
but none of them have ever had great importance or have yielded 
their projectors much profit; the county is not a manufacturing 
county. As early as 1836 an act was passed incorporating the 
^'King's County Woolen Cloth and Mills Co". The persons com- 
posing this company were: Caleb Handley Rand. James Edward 
DeWolf, James Denison, Levi Rice, Isaac Webster, George M. Terry, 
William B. Webster, Winckworth Chipman, Silas W. Masters, and 
Henry B. Webster. This laudable enterprise, however, must have 
died in its infancy. Since that time several other small manufac- 
turing interests have been established in the county, but except in 
the case of one or two none have had much success. 

So conspicuous has King's County become for successful fruit 
raising, and so much is said in certain chapters of the present book 
on the extent and the beauty of the orchards in King's, that we 
append to this chapter the following interesting historical sketch 
of the fruit industry written for the purpose by one of the acknowl- 
edged masters of fruit culture in King's, Mr. Ralph Samuel Eaton, 
whose genius in this direction, as we have already said, conceived 
and brought to successful issue the famous Cornwallis "Hillcrest 
Orchards", not far from the county town. Mr. Eaton says: 

"The first fruit gardens of King's were planted by the 
Acadians, and a few individual apple trees at Gaspereau, Grand 
Pre, and Canard still stand, which are supposed to have been 
planted by these fruit-raising pioneers. Though the first plum 
trees have long since disappeared, some varieties of this fruit are 



204 KING'S COUNTY 

still grown which are traceable to these French Gardens. These 
patches of fruit trees planted by the French encouraged the New 
England settlers who came in 1760 to the farms of the Acadians, 
and they soon began to enlarge the orchards and introduce new 
varieties of fruit. We have the names of several men of the early 
part of the century who took special interest in fruit, and we have 
also the names of a number of varieties of apples, some of them 
still standard sorts, which these men introduced. Col. John Bur- 
bidge has the credit of having started the Nonpareil and English 
Golden Russet; Bishop Charles Inglis introduced the Bishop Pippin 
or Yellow Belle fleur; Ahira Calkin, the Calkin Pippin and Calkin's 
Early; David Bent brought from Massachusetts the Greening Spit- 
zenbzerg, Pearmain, and Vandevere ; but the one man who exerted, 
perhaps, the greatest influence on the early history of the industry 
was the Hon. Charles Prescott, who removed from Halifax to 
Starr's Point in 1812. Here, in his beautifully kept garden, Mr. 
Prescott planted the Ribston, Blenheim, King of Pippins, Graven- 
stein, Alexandra, and Golden Pippin, which he imported from 
England, the Baldwin, Rhode Island Greening, Esopus Spitz, 
Sweet Bough, Early Harvest, and Spy, which he obtained from 
the United States, and the Fameuse, Pomme Gris, and Canada 
Reinette, which he got from Montreal. To Mr. Prescott 's credit, 
too, is the introduction of many of the standard varieties of plums, 
pears, and cherries since grown in the province. 

"Following Mr. Prescott, Charles and Richard Starr, Benjamin 
"Woodworth, James Hardwick, Dr. Charles Cottnam Hamilton, 
"Ward Eaton, Charles Dickie, James Eaton, Leander Rand, and 
John Chipman, in Cornwallis, and the Johnsons and DeWolfs in 
Horton, should be mentioned as men who showed great interest in 
the early fruit culture of the county. 

"In the days of those men the great hindrance to orchard 
extension was lack of markets, which in turn was because of lack of 
transportation facilities. The industry was put on a stable footing, 
and began a steady increase of about fifty per cent, every five years, 
when the railway was opened to Halifax. Between 1870 and '80, 



CHIEF INDUSTRIES 205 

regular shipments of apples began to England. The following 
figures show the average export of barrels for each five years of 
the last thirty years from the whole province, and it is quite safe 
to allot one-half of this quantity to the County of King's. The 
total crop of the county would be about one-third added to this 
half for local consumption: 1880- '85, 23,920; 1885- '90, 83,249; 
1890- '95, 118,552; 1895-1900, 259,200; 1900- '05, 320,406; 1905- '10, 
482,298. It is felt by the best fruit growers that this ratio of 
increase should be more than maintained during the next twenty 
years; the result will then be that King's will raise over a million 
and a half barrels a year. 

"Inseparable from the history of the fruit industry in Nova 
Scotia, and unquestionably the principal agent in orchard develop- 
ment during these thirty years, has been the Nova Scotia Fruit 
Growers' Association, which until the last few years has virtually 
had its home in King's County. This association was organized in 
1863, with Eobert Grant Haliburton as its first president, and the 
next year Dr. Charles Cottnam Hamilton as its second, and its 
existence shows, as has often before been shown, how men of travel 
and education frequently have marked influence in organizing and 
carrying on works for the public good entirely outside the lines of 
their own proper professions. The Nova Scotia Fruit Growers' 
Association was largely the outcome of the success of an exhibit 
of fruit and vegetables made by the province the year before its 
inception, at the Royal Horticultural Society's Exhibition in Lon- 
don, England, where one silver and seven bronze medals were won by 
the province besides much favourable press comment. All the early 
exhibitions of Nova Scotia, from which so much inspiration and 
education came, were the result of this association's activity. To 
its credit, too, is due the enviable position the province has taken 
at such international displays of fruit as at Philadelphia, Chicago, 
Buffalo, Omaha, London, Edinburgh, Paris, and the several exhibi- 
tions that have been held in the Dominion of Canada. 

**No record of the King's County fruit industry would be com- 
plete without the mention of names of men who have borne a 



WQ KING'S COUNTY 

leading part in the activities of the Fruit Growers' Association dur- 
ing the past thirty years. The man who has been identified longest 
with the association, and has probably rendered it the best service, 
is Major Robert William Starr of Wolfville, one of the leading 
scientific pomologists of the Canadian Dominion. Major Starr was 
one of the first secretaries of the association, and has been twice its 
president. The other secretaries have been Andrew Johnson and 
Charles H. R. Starr, of Wolfville, and S. C. Parker of Berwick, the 
last of whom has efficiently filled the position for about fifteen 
years. Among the King's County men who have held the presi- 
dency have been Henry Chipman, M. D., of Grand Pre, J. W. 
Bigelow, of Wolfville, who held the position with marked credit 
for many years; Peter Innes, of Cold Brook, Ralph S. Eaton, of 
Hillcrest Orchards, John Donaldson, of Port Williams, and E. E. 
Archibald of Wolfville. 

''To the Fruit Growers' Association is further due the existence 
for some years at Wolfville of a Horticultural School for the 
province, the first of such schools on the continent, and later the 
establishment of an Agricultural College, the second of its kind on 
the continent, which absorbed the Horticultural School. Its latest 
service to the fruit-growing industry is the establishment of a 
Provincial Experimental Station for Horticulture, the farm for 
which has lately been purchased at Kentville. 

''The breadth of the valley in King's County, its central 
position in the fruit belt of Nova Scotia, and the intelligence of its 
fruit growers, combine to make the county one of the most progres- 
sive fruit-raising sections of the whole American continent. Already 
the development of the fruit industry has increased the value of 
the county's farms many times over what they would otherwise 
have been, and with the future certain progress of the industry 
this value will doubtless in the future still further increase." 

To this interesting sketch of the fruit industry of the county 
Mr. Eaton adds the fact, that J. Spurgeon Bishop, of Auburn, 
shipped the first car load of cranberries from King's County in 
1892. In 1898, he says, there were 3,000 barrels of cranberries 
grown in Aylesford, in 1908, 5,000 barrels. 



CHAPTER XIII 
HOUSES, FURNITURE, DRESS 

The frames of some of the first houses that were built in Corn- 
wallis and Horton, but how many we do not know, were brought 
from Connecticut or from Maine, and the standards of architecture 
the planters who owned them recognized, were those commonly- 
held in rural communities of New England at the time they came 
to King's County. In his "Early Khode Island Houses" and 
"Early Connecticut Houses", Professor Isham, of Brown University^ 
apparently divides the dwelling house architecture of New England 
before strictly Colonial times into three periods, from 1640 to 1675, 
from 1675 to 1700, and from 1700 to 1730. The Connecticut houses of 
the first period he describes as of one story, a story and a half, or two 
stories high, and as having an "overhang", or projection over the 
lower story. On the ground floor they had usually but two rooms 
and a narrow entry, with sometimes a small lean-to. In the second 
period the great change consisted in the addition of a kitchen and 
other rooms at the back, these rooms covered by a lean-to roof and 
built as an integral part of the house, and not as an ell. The dis- 
tinguishing mark of the third period was the upright or full two- 
story house, with its kitchen and kitchen chamber behind the 
parlour and hall. In this period the overhang was still very often 
found, but it had much less projection. In the earlier houses 
the "summer", a beam supporting the upper story, and crossing 
the room from the chimney to the end, was universally found, 
but here it was of less depth, that it might on the under 
side be flush with the joists, which were now made larger, and be 
plastered over and concealed. In all three periods plaster was 
freely used on ceiling and walls, and the great brick chimney, with 
its cavernous fire-place, was found. 



208 KING'S COUNTY 

The first Cornwallis and Horton houses must have partaken of 
the characteristics of both the first and the second of these early 
American architectural periods, they were chiefly low, steep-roofed, 
story and a half dwellings (the roof, back and front, having the 
same pitch), containing two rooms on the ground floor and often a 
back porch or ell, the narrow entry leading directly to the chimney, 
which occupied the end of the house, but was not uncovered. In front 
of the chimney a steep, narrow stair-case led to the low-eaved bed- 
rooms above. In King's County neither the uncovered chimney 
nor the overhang, so far as we know, was ever found. In Connec- 
ticut, says Professor Isham, at a later period, perhaps about 1760, 
"the increased wealth of the colonists and their desire to follow 
English fashions introduced more elaborate finish. There appears, 
too, a most significant change in the plan, the introduction of the 
central-entry type. Here the old entry or porch, with its chimney 
behind it, is replaced by a passage running from the front to the 
back of the house. There are two rooms at each side of this pas- 
sage, and the chimneys of these were at first in the end walls of 
the house, and then between each pair, as the chimney once was 
between the rooms which anciently constituted the dwelling. A 
later development still, is the addition of the ell, often really an 
older house, to contain the kitchen. Already, early in this period, 
if not toward the end of the one before it, the old sharp pitch of 
the roof had been visibly flattened, and before the end, the gambrel 
had become established, though how or when it came into fashion 
is an obscure question. The central-entry plan, with either a 
gambrel or a plain pitched roof held sway till long after the Revo- 
lution, and was superseded only at the Greek Revival of 1830". 

In Nova Scotia the "Greek Revival" never spread. Nowhere 
there did the lofty-pillared mansions, so conspicuous in many New 
England and Middle States' towns, rear their imposing heads. The 
plain two-story, central-entried or more frequently, gambrel-roofed 
house, was the highest type of dwelling Cornwallis and Horton, as 
a general thing, ever achieved. In the first quarter of the 19th 
century a few houses showing Colonial influence appeared, but 



HOUSES, FURNITURE, DRESS 209 

these were conspicuously few. For the most part, the King's 
County houses, at least those built before 1860, were central-entried, 
story-and-a-half houses, with chimneys of not very large size 
between each pair of rooms on the first and second floors. In the 
larger villages slightly different types have developed, small 
piazzas often serving to break the monotony of line. The four most 
conspicuous examples in Horton and Cornwallis of houses of a more 
ambitious type, are the Colonial house built and originally occupied 
by Hon. Charles Kamage Prescott, near the Cornwallis Town Plot, 
the house in Wolfville built by Elisha DeWolf, Jr., that built in 
Kentville by David Whidden, Sr., long owned by Hon. James Delap 
Harris, but now by Col. Leverett de Veber Chipman ; and the house, 
also in Kentville, of Mr. Caleb Handley Rand, now owned by Col. 
Wentworth Eaton Roscoe. 

Of the early Norwich, Connecticut, houses, Miss Caulkins, the 
historian says : ' ' Towns were not built in those days like a factory 
village, all at once and after one model. At Norwich, especially, 
if considered in its whole extent, great diversity in the form and 
position of the buildings was displayed. Ho^re a house stood 
directly on the town street; another was placed at the end of a 
lane; a third in a meadow by a gurgling brook; and others were 
scattered over the side-hills, or sheltered under jutting ledges of 
rock. Some were only one-story, with two rooms, but the better 
sort presented a wide, imposing front of two stories, ending in a 
very low story in the rear. The windows were small and few. The 
rooms were supplied with chimney-closets, both over the fire- 
places and by their sides. In the chambers, and sometimes even in 
the garret, large closets might be seen diving here and there into 
the chimney, or occupying the space between the chimneys. As 
the houses decayed, these closets became receptacles for rubbish 
and vermin. Often in later times, the wrecks of discarded furni- 
ture, old snow-shoes, moth-eaten buff-caps, broken utensils, and 
sometimes books and pamphlets, or written papers, discolored, 
tattered, nibbled, till they were worthless, have been dragged from 
those reservoirs". 



210 KING'S COUNTY 

Suggestive, indeed, this description is of the location and 
and general external and internal appearance of many of the 
Cornwallis and Horton houses that older people, born in the county, 
remember well. As a rule, the houses of the Cornwallis and Horton 
planters were placed a very short distance off the main roads, with 
small flower gardens in front and vegetable gardens at the side. 
The most important interior feature of the house was the cavernous; 
fire-place. In these huge fire-places, on winter nights, the flames, 
from great logs "bellied and tugged" in a majestic way. "Wood 
was abundant, though it often had to be hauled a long distance,, 
and the absence in the fall of a generous wood-pile was usually 
a distinct indication of unthrift, as well as a mournful prophecy 
of discomfort to the household the long winter through. In 1744: 
Benjamin Franklin invented a cast-iron open heater, the Franklin 
stove, but the cast-iron box stove was not invented till 1752. In 
1782, and very likely earlier, Franklin stoves were advertised for 
sale in Halifax, and it is very likely that some few of these almost 
as soon as they reached Halifax found their way into King 's County 
houses. 

As late as from 1885- '90 some few of the old first planters* 
houses of the county were still standing. One of these was a 
gambrel-roofed house at Grand Pre, in 1885 occupied by Mr. H. C. 
Vaughn; another a house built by Jonathan Hamilton, at the date 
mentioned occupied by Col. Tuzo, and believed to be the oldest 
house then standing in the eastern end of the county. 

In Connecticut, in the middle of the 18th century, the great 
mass of furniture, even in rich men's houses, was entirely of 
native manufacture, and was made of cedar, white wood, cherry, 
and black walnut. Among these woods, cherry, especially, had 
favour for the construction of chests, tables, chairs, and cases of 
drawers. The furniture the King's County planters brought with 
them from Connecticut must have been chiefly of these common 
woods. They had two, three, four or five slat, black-painted rush- 
bottom chairs, oval tables, tables with drop leaves, high-post bed- 
steads, chests of drawers, brass dog's head andirons, bellows, iron 



HOUSES, FURNITURE, DRESS 211 

shovels and tongs, often with brass tops; warming pans, foot- 
stoves, brass kettles, wool and flax spinning wheels, and possibly 
a few of not the most expensive grades of tall clocks. In Miss 
Esther Singleton's "The Furniture of our Forefathers", the 
author says: "It is customary to think of old and 'Colonial' fur- 
niture as consisting entirely of mahogany. This idea is erroneous. 
Mahogany furniture was virtually non-existent in the South before 
1720. People in Moderate circumstances occasionally possessed a 
mahogany table, but their furniture was almost entirely of oak, 
pine, bay, cypress, cedar, and walnut". In New England 
mahogany did not much make its appearance before 1730, "when 
an occasional dressing box begins to appear in the inventories". How 
many pieces of mahogany furniture were brought into King's 
County from Connecticut, or were later imported from England, 
or purchased in Halifax, we cannot, of course, tell, but it is doubt- 
ful if before 1830 or '40 there was very much. In Halifax and 
"Windsor, however, where there was a good deal more wealth than 
in the villages of King's, it is likely that as soon as mahogany 
became at all common in Boston it pretty freely appeared. 

Of the furniture of Halifax houses towards the end of the 
18th century and the beginning of the 19th, Dr. George "W. Hill 
says: "The furniture in the dwellings of those who possessed 
means was of a far more substantial character than that now used 
by persons of the same class, and was considerably more expensive. 
The householder, however, was content with a far less quantity 
than is deemed necessary at the present day. It was usually made 
of mahogany wood, of a rich, dark colour. The dining-room table 
was plain but massive, supported by heavy legs, often ornamented 
at the feet with the carved resemblance of a lion's claw. The side- 
board was high, but rather narrow and inelegant; the secretary or 
covered writing desk was bound with numberless brass plates at 
the edges, corners, and sides. The cellaret, standing in the corner, 
which held the wines and liquors brought up from the cellar for 
the day's consumption, was also bound elaborately with plates of 
burnished brass. The chairs, cumbrous, straight-backed, with 



212 KING'S COUNTY 

their cushions covered with black horse-haircloth, were as uncom- 
fortable as they were heavy. The sofa, when found, was unadorned 
but roomy. The great arm-chair deserved its title, for it was wide 
enough and deep enough to contain not only the master of the 
household, but, if he pleased, several of his children besides. These 
articles for the most part comprised the furniture of the upper 
classes. 

"That contained in the bedroom was built of the same wood, 
and of a corresponding style. The bedsteads were those still known 
as four-posted, invariably curtained, and with a canopy overhead, 
not only shutting out air, but involving serious expense and labour 
to the matron, as at the approach of winter and summer the curtains 
were always changed. The chests of drawers and the ladies' ward- 
robes were covered with the ubiquitous brazen plates, and being 
kept bright, gave the room an air of comfort and cleanliness. In 
almost every hall stood a clock, encased by a frame of great size; 
a custom introduced by the Germans, from whose native land they 
seem to have been imported in great numbers. The mistress of such 
an establishment had no sinecure in keeping such furniture in 
order; and it was not an unfounded complaint which they pre- 
ferred, that the time of one servant was wholly engrossed with the 
daily routine of burnishing the metal on the furniture and doors, 
and polishing the wood. For common use rough tables were made 
by the mechanics of the town ; and chairs with rush-bottomed seats 
were manufactured in an old establishment in Hollis Street, con- 
ducted by one of the early settlers. It was necessary, however, to 
speak some months before the chairs were actually needed, and if 
the good man happened to be out of rushes, the intending purchaser 
was obliged to wait until the rushes grew, were cut down, and 
dried". 

The dress of the period in New England between the strict 
Puritan times and the Kevolution, ''cannot be eulogized," says 
Miss Caulkins in her History of Norwich, "for its simplicity or 
economy. The wardrobe of the higher circles was rich and extrava- 
gant, and among the females of all classes there was a passion for 



HOUSES, FURNITURE, DRESS 213 

gathering and hoarding articles of attire beyond what was necessary 
for present use, or even for years ahead. It was an object of 
ambition to have a chest full of linen, a pillow-hier of stockings, and 
other articles in proportion, laid by". For example, a certain 
widow Elizabeth AVhite of Norwich, daughter of Samuel Bliss, and 
formerly wife of Daniel White of Middletown, when she died (in 
1757) had among her effects, gowns of brown duroy, striped stuff, 
plaid stuff, black silk crape, calico, and blue camlet ; a scarlet cloak, 
blue cloak, satin-flowered mantle, and furbelow scarf; a woolen 
petticoat with calico border, a camlet riding-hood, a long silk velvet 
hood, white hoods trimmed with lace, a silk bonnet, nineteen caps; 
cambric, laced silk and linen handkerchiefs, sixteen in all; muslin 
laced, flowered laced, and green taffety aprons, fourteen in all; a 
silver ribband, a silver girdle and a blue girdle; four pieces 
of flowered satin; a parcel of crewel, a woman's fan, a gold 
necklace, a death's head gold ring, a plain gold ring, a set 
of gold sleeve buttons, a gold locket, a silver hair peg, silver 
cloak clasps, a stone button, set in silver; a large silver 
tankard, a silver cup with two handles, a silver cup with 
one handle, a large silver spoon; and besides all these 
treasures, some turkey-worked chairs. The more interesting to us 
is this remarkable inventory from the fact that Madam Elizabeth 
"White, both by birth and by marriage was related to persons in 
King's County tracing their descent from the Connecticut Blisses 
and Whites. 

In her "Historic Dress in America", Elizabeth McClellan says: 
"We find that in 1745 the hoop had increased at the sides and 
diminished in front, and a pamphlet was published in that year 
entitled 'The Enormous Abomination of the Hoop Petticoat, as the 
fashion now is'. The hoop of this period was a great bell-shaped 
petticoat or skirt of the dress stiffened by whalebone. The material 
was placed directly upon it, so that, being a part of the gown itself, 
it was customary to speak of 'a damask hoop', or 'a Brocade hoop' ". 
In the summer of 1745, "Gypsy" straw hats appeared, with a 
ribbon tying them under the chin. At this time, ladies' hair was 



^ 



n^ KING'S COUNTY 

dressed rather close to the head, French curls (which looked ''like 
eggs strung in order on a wire tied around the head"), and a little 
later Italian curls, "which had the effect of scollop shells and were 
arranged back from the face in several shapes", or the tete de 
mouton, or tete moutonee, in which the hair was curled close all over 
the back of the head", being fashionable. By 1760 no doubt these 
lasbions had considerably changed, but some of them in more or 
less modified form the wives and daughters of the King's County 
planters probably brought with them from Connecticut. At the 
time of the migration the calash, as a head covering for women does 
not seem to have come into fashion. Women of mature years all 
wore close-fitting linen caps, and whatever their bonnets may have 
been for formal occasions, it is likely that our grandmothers for 
simple goings abroad commonly wore home-made silk or woolen 
hoods. 

By 1779, in Connecticut, "cushions stuffed with wool and 
covered with silk" were used to comb the hair over, this mode of 
hair-dressing making the calash necessary instead of the bonnet. 
The calash "was large and wide, a vast receptacle for wind, and an 
awkward article of attire, but often shrouding a health-brimming 
face in its depth, needing no other ornament than its own good 
humoured smile". The word bonnet, says Mrs. Alice Morse Earle, 
does not appear in America till 1725. By the middle of the cen- 
tury, however, Quilted bonnets, Kitty Fisher bonnets, Queheck 
bonnets, Garrick bonnets, Ranelagh bonnets, French bonnets, 
Queen's bonnets. Cottage bonnets, Russian bonnets, Drawn bonnets, 
Shirred bonnets, were all advertised by New York and Boston 
milliners. To Halifax, and so to the smaller towns of Nova Scotia, 
it is likely that most of the styles of head covering popular in 
Boston and other leading places of New England little by little 
found their way. As Halifax was the headquarters of fashion in 
Nova Scotia, it is probable that very early some King's County 
women bought their best millinery there. 

In 1761, and long after, both for men and women, cloaks of 
some kind were popular in the county. The cloak is always a 



HOUSES, FURNITURE, DRESS 215 

comfortable article of dress, for it wraps the form well, and is easy 
to be thrown on or off. In New England, scarlet cloaks for women 
were worn for several successive generations, and it is impossible 
that the first planters' wives should not have brought some of 
these with them to the province when they came. The capucin or 
hooded cloak, the cardinal, the pellerine, all these may have found 
their way from Connecticut here. Whether muffs were used in 
the county as early as 1761 we do not know, but they must have 
become common soon after, for Mrs. Earle says that ''from 1790 
till 1820 great muffs never went out of fashion for women", or to 
a certain extent for men. It is likely that because of the cold 
climate of Nova Scotia, furs were early universally worn in King's 
County, and that soon after the planters came they began to 
slaughter the little fur-bearing animals to secure these articles of 
dress. 

In 1820, according to Mrs. Earle, a description of the dress 
worn by the generality of New England men in the years previous 
to the Revolution was given in the Old Colony Memorial. The 
description says : "In general men, old and young, who had got 
their growth, had a decent coat, vest, and small clothes, and some 
kind of a fur hat. These were for holiday use and would last half 
a lifetime. Old men had a great coat and a pair of boots. The 
boots generally lasted for life. For common use they had a long 
jacket, or what was called a fly coat, reaching down about half 
way to the knee. They had a striped jacket to wear under a pair of 
small clothes like the coat. These were made of flannel cloth. They 
had flannel shirts and stockings and thick leather shoes. A 
silk handkerchief for holidays would last ten years. In summer 
they had a pair of wide trousers reaching half way from the knee 
to the ankle. As for boys, as soon as they were taken out of petti- 
coats they were put into small clothes, summer and winter. This 
lasted till they put on long trousers, which they called 'tongs'. 
They were but little different from the pantaloons of today. These 
were made of linen or cotton, and soon were used by old men and 
young, through the warm season. Later, they were made of flannel 



216 KING'S COUNTY 

cloth, and were in general use for the winter. Young men never 
thought of great-coats; and overcoats were then unknown". 

This account no doubt accurately describes the ordinary cloth- 
ing of many of the New England planters and their sons who came 
to the county in 1760 and '61. It is doubtful if any of them were 
able to indulge in the "exceeding magnifical" waistcoats, "vdth 
their embroidered pocket-flaps and buttonholes, and their beautiful 
paste buttons; these latter rich in coloured enamels and jewels, in 
odd natural stones of lovely tints, such as agates, carnelians, blood- 
stones, spar, marcasite, onyx, chalcedony lapis lazuli, malachite", 
which Mrs. Earle herself describes as worn by the richest New Eng- 
land men. Nor that any of them, like a certain Boston bridegroom, 
wore rose-pink waistcoats, embroidered in silver, with buttons of 
darker pink shell in silver settings ; or silver-gray velvet coats, also 
with shell buttons; or white satin small clothes, but the dress of 
the most important of them must have been such as comfortably 
off New England rural gentlemen of their time were accustomed 
to wear. 

The only attempt, so far as we know, to record the fashions 
of dress in Nova Scotia, at any period, is that of the late Rev. 
George W. Hill, D. C. L. long the beloved Rector of St. Paul's 
Church, Halifax, who died in England a few years ago. Of men's 
dress in Halifax in the latter part of the 18th century, Dr. Hill 
says: "The fashion of the times was to wear the hair powdered, 
with a queue. This was a long and tedious process. As the hair 
dressers were few they were compelled, in order to get through 
their task previous to the hour appointed for a festivity, to begin it 
early in the morning. He was an unfortunate man, whose turn 
came first, for he was obliged to sit the whole day in idleness, or 
move with slow and measured step, lest he should disarrange the 
handiwork; sleep he dare not, for one unlucky nod would spoil it 
all, and so he was forced patiently to wait until the time came, and, 
then with cautious wary step, proceed slowly to his host's On such 
occasions the full dress consisted of knee-breeches, silk stockings, 
shoes and silver buckles, white neckerchief of amazing thickness. 



HOUSES, FURNITURE, DRESS 217 

straight-collared coats, ornamented with large buttons, a coloured 
waistcoat, and hanging at the side a sword or rapier. This last 
addition to the costume, which was more like a long dagger than 
a sword, was looked upon as the distinguishing badge of one who 
was entitled to be considered as an esquire or gentleman. And 
this species of court dress was frequently called into use. The 
custom of constantly calling together the leading men for consul- 
tation on topics of importance to the colony, resolved itself, as time 
passed, into the holding of levees. In the course of some years 
these official gatherings were held no less than nine times, and on 
all these occasions the streets leading to Government House, were 
filled with the gentlemen of the powdered hair, the silk stockings, 
the silver-hilted sword". 

How many of the King's County gentlemen of the 18th and 
early 19th centuries on state occasions wore frilled shirts, knee- 
breeches, wigs or powdered hair, cocked hats . and swords, it is 
impossible to say, but some of them, like Col. William Charles 
Moore, and most probably Col. Burbidge, Benjamin Belcher, Hand- 
ley Chipman, John Wells, the DeWolfs, and others, did. ''By 
1809", says Mrs. Earle, "we find a stiff standing collar (called a 
dicky in New England) on the necks of all men, worn with or 
without the full pudding cravat. The shirt-frill still continued to 
be worn. I have portraits wherein a full, finely-pleated shirt-frill, 
a jabot shaped ehitterling, a pudding cravat, and a dicky can be 
be seen on one unfortunate wearer. When the waistcoat stood up 
fiercely outside this wear, and an ear-high coat collar was a wall over 
all, no wonder men complained that they could not turn their heads 
or move their necks a half degree. It seems to me a period of excep- 
tional discomfort for men". Until near the middle of the 19th cen- 
tury, in King's County, and with old men long after that, the dicky 
and large black stock were commonly worn. For Sundays and state 
occasions, good black broadcloth, both for trousers and long frock 
coats, was almost invariably used, but on week days men, old and 
young, appeared in grey homespun, woven either at home or on 
some community loom. How early silk hats, "beavers" as they 



218 KING'S COUNTY 

were called, came into use, we do not know, but certainly 
soon after the 19tli century began they were considered necessary, 
at least in summer, for Sunday and holiday wear. 

The tables of King's County people have always been bounti- 
fully supplied. As a rule, says Dr. Hill, writing of Halifax in the 
18th century, food was plentiful and good, and this has always 
been true of King's County as well. Dr. Hill's accaunt of the 
supply for Halifax tables in the 18th century, is interesting. He 
says: "Corned-beef, pork, and salted codfish, far more frequently 
formed the dishes of all classes than fresh meat. For delicacies 
and variety, anxious housekeepers were driven to ingenious devices 
in cooking. The same species of meat was dressed in many ways. 
Poultry early came into fashion, and for game a porcupine was con- 
sidered the right thing. For vegetables each man was dependent 
either on the produce of his own garden, or if he lived in the middle 
of the town, where gardens could not be, he might purchase from 
the public gardener. When after a few years these public gardens 
were abandoned, the want of vegetables was very seriously felt, 
and it was then viewed not only as an enterprise on the part of the 
proprietor, but as highly conducive to the public welfare, when on 
Saturdays he sent one wheelbarrow filled with greens and 
vegetables from a well-kept garden near Freshwater Bridge. All 
the ungardened gentlemen kept watch for the passage of this valu- 
ably laden train, and followed it down to the market that they 
might get their share. The butchers' meat was carried round to 
the customer in the ordinary tray by boys, or on small carts drawn 
by dogs: as was also the bread baked at the two chief bakeries". 
As to drink, "wines and strong liquors" were always plentiful 
and "a craving for stimulants early became the crying evil of the 
town". 

In King's County, fruits and vegetables of the finest kinds 
have always been plentifully raised, in the Basin and the rivers 
the best fish has abounded, beef, mutton, and poultry have been of 
excellent quality, and bread and pastry have usually been baked 
at home. Consequently, the limitations felt by Halifax house- 



HOUSES, FURNITURE, DRESS 219 

keepers can hardly be said to have been felt here. In all the early 
years of the New England occupation of the county, and indeed 
until comparatively recent times, a good deal of rum and cider were 
drunk, and from the records of the Court of Sessions we learn that 
the results were often of a most disastrous kind. Yet it can hardly 
be said that drunkenness has ever been a conspicuous King's 
County vice. Of Windsor township, shortly after Hants County 
was set off from King's, Dr. Henry Youle Hind, in histoid Parish 
Burying Ground", says: "In the four years included between 
1788 and 1792, great efforts at reform were made in Windsor town- 
ship", as indeed in Hants County at large. "The old Parish 
Church was built, the Academy was opened, the College was 
founded and inaugurated, a Temperance Society was organized, a 
Eeading Society was established, men were fined for being intoxi- 
cated in the streets, citizens were arrested and fined for uttering 
one profane oath, public whipping for misdemeanors was prac- 
tised, the pillory was in full operation, sinners were mulcted for 
not going to church, constables were appointed to inspect public 
houses on the Sabbath Day, women of light character were hustled 
out of the village by officers of the law, and petitions from the 
Bench and the Grand Jury were in order to stop trade with the 
United States. Yet, in the midst of all these efforts at goodness, 
rum strove hard, and often succeeded in holding the reins of 
power". At this period, as later. King's County undoubtedly had 
its share of moral defects, yet gross immorality can nowhere be 
said to have been, in any remotest corner of it, a glaring thing. 

In pursuance of the mention by Dr. Hind of fines being exacted 
for failure to attend church, it may be noticed that among the 
early statutes made in the province is one which prescribes that 
"a person absenting himself from public worship for the space of 
three months, without proper cause, if the head of a family, shall 
pay a fine of five shillings, every child over twelve years of age, 
and every servant, five shillings". It was also enacted that in 
Halifax "the church wardens and constables should once in the 
forenoon and once in the afternoon, in the time of divine service, 



220 KING'S COUNTY 

walk through the town to observe and suppress all disorders and 
apprehend all offenders". In "Windsor, on the 24th of April, 1789, 
the Court of Sessions of Hants County directed that as George 
Henry Monk and Nathaniel Eay Thomas, Esqrs., Massachusetts 
Loyalists, ''had neglected to attend divine service for the space of 
three months, to the evil example of society, these two gentlemen 
should be fined ten shillings each". The Sessions record reads 
that Mr. Thomas paid his fine, but that Mr. Monk on technical 
grounds was relieved from doing so. 

In Windsor, from the earliest period, the Church of England 
was pre-eminent among religious bodies, but in Cornwallis and Hor- 
ton Puritan Independency bore less interrupted sway. With the 
Nova Scotia Congregationalists outward conformity to the require- 
ments of religion was not so much a matter of course as with 
Anglican Churchmen, and moreover, in their earliest years in the 
county the Congregationalist planters had only desultory religious 
Services of their own denomination, when they had any at all. 
Consequently, we do not hear in King's County of presentments by 
the Grand Jury or Court of Sessions for failure to attend church. 
That the keeping of Sunday free from labour, however, was an abso- 
lute rule, will be understood from the fact that in 1761 the provin- 
cial legislature enacted that no person or persons should ''do or 
exercise any labour, work, or business, or his or their ordinary 
callings, or other worldly labour, or suffer the same to be done, by 
his or their servant or servants, child or children, either by land or 
by water (works of necessity and charity alone excepted), or use 
or suffer to be used, any sport, game, play or pastime, on the Lord's 
Day, or any part thereof", under penalty of ten shillings for each 
offence. 

With few books and almost no newspapers, how the long 
Sundays were spent in the various scattered communities of King's 
County in these times one often wonders. In later days churches 
were multiplied and it became almost as much the rule to attend 
service, even when the preachers' doctrines were not fully agreed 
with, as it was in communities where Anglicanism strongly prevailed. 



HOUSES, FURNITURE, DRESS 221 

On week days and evenings, however, the natural instinct for 
diversion was permitted to assert itself, and social gatherings on 
winter nights, and picnics in summer, besides what may be called 
"industrial frolics", were very common. In Anglican and Pres- 
byterian circles, dancing and cards were more or less freely allowed, 
but before the middle of the 19th century, and indeed a good deal 
later, among Baptists and Methodists indulgence in simple amuse- 
ments of this nature was regarded as sinful in the extreme. In 
Henry Alline's New Light church in Cornwallis, August 21, 1792, 
"Sister Susannah Eaton, made a public acknowledgement of her 
levity, dancing, etc., and still desired to walk with the church, 
except in the Sacrament". About the same time "Sister Julia Ann 
Sivgard" was suspended from the church "on account of levity, 
singing songs, etc., and had no desire to lay the least restraint upon 
herself" — ^poor light-minded, song-singing Sister Julia Ann! As 
people's ideas grew broader, what was known as the best society 
of the county indulged freely in dancing and cards, and at least 
after the middle of the 19th century, many gay and rather elegant 
entertainments were given every winter, especially in and near 
the more important villages and towns. 

To the New Light revival in Cornwallis and Horton must 
largely have been due the strong objection to dancing which so 
late continued to prevail in the township, for at the time our 
ancestors left Connecticut, "neighborly dancing" was one of the 
commonest amusements in that colony. On the 12th of June, 1769, 
a great wedding dance took place at New London, at the house of 
Squire Nathaniel Shaw. His son, Daniel Shaw, had just married 
Oraee Coit, and ninety-two gentlemen and ladies came to the dance. 
It is recorded that this merry assemblage danced "ninety-two jigs, 
fifty-two contra dances, forty-five minuets and seventeen horn- 
pipes", and that they retired at forty-five minutes past midnight. 
The music for these Connecticut dances was often furnished by a 
skilled fiddler; though quite as often, we learn, part of the com- 
pany sang for the others to dance. The suppers that followed the 
dancing were of cake, nuts, apples, and cider. In winter, sleighing 



222 KING'S COUNTY 

parties were common, and on Election, Training, and Thanksgiving 
days, shooting at targets, horse-racing, wrestling, running, and 
jumping, were popular amusements. In King's County, also, these 
athletic sports must sometimes have been indulged in, and from the 
love of good horses that has always prevailed, one can hardly believe 
that horse racing did not at an extremely early date have a recog- 
nized, if somewhat qualified, place among the county's diversions. 
Tradition has it, says Dr. Hind, that during his administration as 
governor of the province (1766-1773) Lord William Campbell had 
a race-course round Fort Edward hill at "Windsor, and this may 
easily have been the formal beginning of horse racing in the County 
of King's. In 1773, the l^ova Scotia Gazette advertises that at a 
fair to be held at Windsor races are to be held, the competition in 
which is to be limited to native bred horses. The prizes to be run 
for are to be one "plate" of twenty pounds, and one of ten pounds. 
"This day", says Henry Alline, in his journal, writing on the 28th 
of February, 1781, "I went from Cornwallis to Horton, and O, 
how was I grieved to see a vast crowd of people at horse-racing! 
O, if they knew the worth of those precious hours they are 
wasting, and the danger their poor souls are in, they would not 
risk their souls on such a pinnacle of danger ' ' ! 

In Halifax, theatrical performances were popular at an early 
date. In April, 1773, two comedies, "The Suspicious Husband", 
and "The Citizen", were given for the benefit of the poor, the 
price of admission to this double performance being two-and-six- 
pence. About 1818 two rival theatrical companies were perform- 
ing in Halifax, only one public theatre, however, a theatre situated 
on Fairbanks' Wharf, being in existence in the town. A few of the 
King's County people, no doubt, from time to time saw these 
Halifax performances, but travelling was expensive and difficult, 
and the great majority of them could hardly ever, if ever, have 
visited the city. 

In Nova Scotia at large, until daguerreotyping became known 
there were very few portraits of any kind made. Consequently, of 
the earliest King's County settlers we have no likenesses. With 



HOUSES, FURNITURE, DRESS 223 

the advent of the Loyalists from the richer American colonies a few 
oil portraits came into the province, but in King's County, to the 
middle of the 19th century, at least, there must have been almost 
none. In 1839 the French Daguerre perfected the w^onderful art ever 
since known by his name, and by the middle of the century, or a 
little later, beautiful daguerreotype portraits were freely made in the 
county. As the art of photography developed, the taking of small 
card photographs and tin-types became common, and thus by 
degrees photographic portraiture in the county became a finished 
art. 

In common with all civilized peoples, the King's County 
planters loved and cultivated ornamental shade trees and flowers. 
The native flora of Nova Scotia is similar to that of eastern New 
England, but the Connecticut people brought with them from their 
old homes not only the imported Lombardy Poplars, but most of 
the beautiful vines and garden flowers they had cultivated with, 
affection on the places they had left. On the trellised porches and 
in the gardens of King's County will still be found blooming lineal 
successors of the fragrant cream-and-pink petalled honeysuckles, 
and the luscious white roses, and other familiar flowers, that are the 
delight of summer visitors to Norwich and Lebanon, in the State 
of Connecticut, to-day. 

In the early King's County gardens grew freely, old-fashioned 
sweet-williams, shy lilies of the valleys, rich carnation pinks, hardy, 
gay coloured stocks, dainty sweet-peas, pungent scented southern- 
wood, blue bachelors' buttons, deep-belled foxgloves, asters, mari- 
golds, nasturtiums, and fragrant mignonette. In the yards were 
clumps of red cabbage, or pink blush, roses, drooping bushes of 
white waxberries, and heavily laden purple lilac bushes ; and some- 
times, interspersed, the dominating sunflower, with his huge, golden, 
heavy-fringed head. Above them all the acacia often hung his 
fair clustering blooms, and along the roadsides, a little further away, 
would be spicy-smelling Balm-of-Gilead trees, and the drooping 
boughs, laden with glistening scarlet berries, of the sturdy mountain 
ash. 



CHAPTER XIY 
MARRIAGES, DOMESTIC LIFE, SLAVES 

In the King's County township books, the parish register of St. 
John's Church, Cornwallis, and the record of licenses, in Halifax, 
most, if not all of the early marriages solemnized in the county after 
1760 will be found recorded. In Nova Scotia, from 1758, when the 
first Assembly met, until 1832, in spite of the legal religious equality 
that was promised to all settlers in the province except Roman 
Catholics, licenses to marry without the publication of banns were 
strictly withheld from dissenters from the Church of England. In 
the first Assembly an act was passed imposing a fine of fifty pounds 
on any one who should celebrate a marriage without publication of 
banns, except under a license from the governor. From the gov- 
ernor, through the Provincial Secretary, it was always easy on 
payment of twenty shillings currency to obtain a license, but 
licenses were invariably addressed to some minister of the Anglican 
Church, never to one of another denomination. Very early, how- 
ever, it became common for the clergymen who had received these 
licenses, for a consideration to transfer them to ministers of other 
religious bodies. The license invariably specified that the marriage 
was to be performed according to the rites of the Church of 
England, but even this restriction, it is said, was not by any means 
always observed. 

By 1818 the double restriction concerning the performance of 
marriages became so intolerable to the people discriminated against 
that strong petitions were presented in the legislature for entire 
equality in the laws. The complainants properly described the 
discrimination against them as an infringement of the liberty in 
religion that had been so frankly promised them when they came 
to the province. In the protracted discussion of the subject which 



DOMESTIC LIFE 225 

now arose in the Assembly, Col. Jonathan Crane of Horton, among 
others, took a leading part, "he showed that the license system had 
existed for sixty years and more, and that it was peculiar to the 
Church of England. He concurred in the opinion that it was a 
grievance that dissenters were obliged to apply for a license to the 
head of a church to which they did not belong". Changes in the 
laws, however, are usually slowly made, and it was not until 1832 
that the oppressive restrictions were removed. By an act of the 
legislature passed on the 14th of April of that year it became lawful 
to issue marriage licenses to the duly ordained and settled ministers 
of all denominations, the parties desiring the license, however, being 
required to belong to the same denomination as the minister by 
whom the ceremony was to be performed. The preamble to the act 
declares, that "it is expedient that the ministers of various denomi- 
nations of Christians within this province should possess the power 
of solemnizing marriages by license, without the publication of 
banns, according to the forms of their respective churches, or 
religious persuasions, and it is expedient that such power should 
be granted". Under the new system, as under the old, a bond was 
always given by the intending bridegroom, declaring, under 
penalty of a hundred pounds, that the parties were not already 
married, and that they did not come within the table of prohibited 
degrees. 

The first marriage recorded on the Town Book of Cornwallis 
is that of Archelaus Hammond and Jerusha, daughter of Simon 
and Jerusha Newcomb ; it was performed by Handley Chipman, 
Justice of the Peace, on the 22nd of June, 1762, "agreeable to the 
form prescribed in the Common Prayer Book". Amongst other 
couples Mr. Chipman married also, July 29, 1763, James Condon 
and Sibel Bill. An early marriage in Cornwallis, performed by 
the Rev. Joseph Bennett, Anglican missionary, probably on one of 
his brief visits to the town, was that of Joseph Chase and Hannah 
Ells, the date being October 21, 1764. A somewhat curious marriage 
ceremony which is recorded at length in the Cornwallis Town 
Book was that which united Stephen Chase and Abigail Porter. It 



226 KING'S COUNTY ' 

bears date August 2, 1764. The post facto declaration made by the 
parties is as follows: "Whereas Stephen Chase of Cornwallis, in 
the county of King's County, and in the Province of Nova Scotia, 
yeoman, and Abigail Porter, daughter of Samuel Porter, late of 
Cornwallis, deceased, and Remember, his wife; they, the said 
Stephen Chase and Abigail Porter having declared their intention 
of marriage and nothing appearing to obstruct — Therefore these 
may Certify to all whom it may Concern that for their full accom- 
plishing of their said Intentions of Marriage, they the said Stephen 
Chase and Abigail Porter appeared at the House of Said Stephen 
Chase in said Cornwallis, before a number of people met together 
for that purpose, and then and there the said Stephen Chase took 
the said Abigail Porter by the hand and declared that he took her 
to be his Wife and promised to be a True and Loving Husband until 
Death should separate them, and then and there the said Abigail 
Porter took the said Stephen Chase to be her husband and in Like 
Manner to be a true and Loving Wife unto him until death should 
separate them, and furthermore as a further Confirmation thereof 
she the said Abigail assumed the name of her Husband, and we 
whose names are hereunto written being Present at said solemniza- 
tion, have hereunto set our hands as witnesses thereof on the 
second Day of August, 1764. 

Isaac Bigelow Moses Gore, Jr. 

Samuel Starr Stephen Herenton 

Branch Blackmore Abigail Bigelow 

Ethan Pratt Sarah Blackmore 

Ezra Cogswell Ruth West 

Elisha Porter Meriam Porter 
William Newcomb 

(Abigail Chase 
Stephen Chase". 

By a like ceremony Stephen Chase was married again in Corn- 
wallis, January 28, 1776, to Mrs. Nancy (White) Bushell, of Hali- 



DOMESTIC LIFE 227 

fax. The witnesses to this marriage were : William Smith, Samuel 
Bill, Perry Burden, Samuel Ells, Stephen Emmerson, Mary Bill. 

In 1793, an act was passed making valid marriages that had 
been performed in any part of the province by "Justices of the 
Peace and other laymen". In a letter to the home authorities on 
the subject, Governor Wentworth explains that the act had been 
passed for the benefit of people, chiefly settlers from New England, 
who lived in places where it was difficult if not impossible to get 
a clergyman. In 1795 the governor was empowered to appoint 
laymen to solemnize marriages in townships where there was no 
resident clergyman, and the practice of marrying in this way, says 
Murdoch in 1865, "continued till very recent times". 

Concerning the domestic life of King's County people in the 
scattered homes of Cornwallis and Horton in early times, Dr. John 
Burgess Calkin has pleasantly written : "In the time of our grand- 
fathers and later, almost everything people in the country places, 
used was home-made. The farmer manufactured his own imple- 
ments, his carts, sleds, harrows, plows, rakes, baskets. If the 
good-wife wanted milk dishes her husband made trays from, 
blocks of wood by scooping out the centre with an adze and a 
crooked knife. If she needed brooms he made them from ash or 
birch saplings taken from the neighboring forest. The ash broom 
was the more durable, but it required more work in its manufac- 
ture. In making the brush the wood had to be pounded to separate 
the different years' growth. Within the house the industries were 
equally varied. The home was a cheese-factory, a soap-factory, a 
candle-factory, a cloth-factory. The wool was taken from the 
sheep's back, picked, carded, spun, dyed, woven, and made into 
garments, all by the mother and daughters. In like manner was 
carried on the manufacture of linen, from the raising of the flax, 
through the various processes of pulling, rotting, breaking, 
swingling, hackling, spinning, weaving, bleaching, until there came 
out from the long and varied operations the snow white table 
clothes and towels. All this has passed away with the changing 
times. The little treadle wheel, propelled by the busy foot, while 



228 KING'S COUNTY 

the dextrous hand drew out the thread from the distaff, this same 
little wheel, that with its incessant hum kept time with the anxious 
thought of Miles Standish, now stands forever silent, cleaned, 
stained, and polished — a parlour ornament. These home-made things 
lacked that fineness of finish characteristic of the factory-made ones 
of the present day, but besides serving their purpose for the genera- 
tion that then was, the making of them gave an all round develop- 
ment to boys and girls and helped fashion them into the strenuous 
men and women they became. Our pioneer ancestors were many- 
sided men and women. They abounded in expedients, they were 
never nonplussed by emergencies. 

"In no way, perhaps, is a people's progress in civilization and 
comfort more clearly indicated than in the history of its means of 
illumination, the lighting of its homes. From the pine knot to the 
electric light is a long stride, and one that indicates marvellous 
changes in social life. The chief light in early days was the tallow 
candle. The manufacture of these feeble luminaries was generally 
the work of some day in winter, soon after the slaughter of a cow 
for family use. The first part of the process was the preparation of 
the wicks and the stringing of them on rods. The candle rods were 
sticks about twenty inches long and three eighths of an inch in 
diameter. Over these the cotton wicking was doubled, each wick 
being about nine or ten inches in length. Six of these were placed 
on each rod, about an inch and a half apart. Sixty or more of 
these rods, thus strung with wicks, the centres and beginnings of 
as many candles as there are days in the year, were hung across 
two long poles, which rested on kitchen chairs, one at either end. 
The tallow was melted in a large pot or kettle of boiling water in 
such proportions that about one third of the liquid in the vessel was 
tallow and two thirds water. The melted tallow having less specific 
gravity than the water would rise to the top. The vessel was 
placed beside the suspended rods and forthwith the dipping began. 
Beginning at one end the dipper lifted the rods, one after another 
consecutively, from the poles, plunged the wicks into the kettle, 
took them out quickly, and then replaced the rods across the poles. 



DOMESTIC LIFE 229 

This process went on through the whole row, and was repeated 
many times, until the candles had grown to the proper size. The 
growth was on the same principle as that exemplified in the forma- 
tion of icicles, only there is no central thread in the icicle, and the 
lower end is smaller. 

"The most sacred spot in all the house in the olden time was 
the hearth, with the big open fire burning brightly on it. It was 
no easy matter to start this fire, or to maintain its continuity. It 
is difficult for people of our day to realize fully the value or con- 
venience of the friction match. It is a little over half a century 
since matches came into common use; how did our fathers and 
grandfathers do without them? In the first place, like the ancient 
Vestal Virgins they used every precaution to keep the fire from 
dying out. A partially burned brand, its face glowing with fire, 
was carefully covered over with ashes to exclude the air and thus 
arrest combustion. For holding the fire nothing served better than 
a hemlock knot, which was obtained from some decayed log or 
stump. In the morning the ashes were drawn off, showing a fine 
bed of coals on which to build the new fire. Sometimes, however, 
the brand was wholly consumed and not a spark remained. Then 
came the question what to do. Various expedients were possible, 
a common one was to send a small boy to a neighbor's, a quarter 
of a mile away, 'to borrow fire'. Seizing the coal between two chips, 
held by the thumb and finger, the boy hastened home with his 
precious charge. The faster he ran, fanned by the current of air 
set up by his movements the more lively became the coal. Occa- 
sionally, to save his fingers he had to throw down the burning 
thing before he reached home. Another way to start the house- 
hold fire was to use an old flint-lock gun. A little powder placed 
in the pan was ignited by a spark generated by the action of the 
hammer on the flint. Sometimes the flint was removed from the 
gun and struck sharply by the back of a jack-knife blade. The 
burning powder conveyed the flame to a bunch of tinder or tow, 
and this again set fire to the wood. When the sun shone, fire was 
sometimes obtained by concentrating the rays through a convex 



230 KING'S COUNTY 

lens, or burning-glass, as it was called. Again, a chemical match 
was employed. This consisted of a splinter of wood coated with 
sulphur, having the end tipped with a mixture of sugar and 
chlorate of potash, made adhesive by a little glue and ignited by 
dipping the end in sulphuric acid ' '. 

On the gradual substitution of small burning-fluid lamps for 
tallow candles, as a means of lighting houses and churches. Dr. 
Calkin has not spoken. The earliest "fluid lamps" must have 
come to the county somewhere about 1855, but as late as 1860, at 
least, tallow candles must have been chiefly used to light all build- 
ings, public and private. For a long time, in Kentville, people of 
various denominations were accustomed to worship on Sunday 
evenings in the Methodist Chapel, near the foot of the Academy 
hill, and many persons living must retain vivid recollections of the 
lighting of candles in that church, as the darkness grew deeper, 
often during the singing of a hymn. From "fluid" the county 
passed before long to kerosene oil as a means of obtaining light, 
this finally, in the towns, being supplanted in great measure by 
electricity. 

Of people's amusements and holiday observances, Dr. Calkin 
says: "Our fathers were sons of toil, but they were often able to 
get amusement out of their work. In many places, 'frolics' or 
'bees' were common, in which all the neighbors for miles around 
would assemble to help one another. There were 'piling frolics', 
'husking frolics', 'raising frolics', for all which it was essential to 
have some stimulating drink, mostly rum. When Christmas Eve 
came, the Christmas back-log, of larger size than the back-log of 
other days, was rolled into position hard to the back of the fire- 
place, the smaller sticks being built up in front. Early on Christ- 
mas morning the children of the household were astir. Breakfast 
was soon over and preparations for cooking the dinner were begun. 
A long string was twisted from the coarser fibres of home-grown 
flax. One end of this string was fastened to a large nail in the beam 
directly over the hearth. To the other end, which came down 
directly to the fire, was attached a turkey, a goose, or perchance a 



DOMESTIC LIFE 231 

young pig. The cooking process was thus carried on by the heat 
that was radiated from the open fire. But that the cooking might 
go forward evenly, the roast must be kept ever on the whirl to 
bring all sides in turn before the fire. The impetus for this cir- 
cular movement was given by hand, so that constant attention was 
needed. But to keep the string from being untwisted and falling 
to pieces, with constant disaster to the roast, the whirling had to 
be now in one direction, then in another". 

To Dr. Calkin's brief account of the amusements of King's 
County young people, might be added holiday excursions to launch- 
ings, and once a year to the performances at Kentville of the 
travelling circus. For many of the older men, Supreme Court trials 
at Kentville were, spring and fall, an important diversion. "When 
a particularly interesting ease was being tried men from all parts 
of the county would drive to the shire town in the early morning, 
and all day remain spell-bound in the stifling court-room, listening 
to the evidence as the various witnesses were called. Fortunately, 
few murder trials have ever been held in the county, and the 
morbid excitement of these lamentable events for the most part 
King's County people have been spared. To the Kentville young 
people the opening of court was always an interesting event. After 
the Kentville Hotel was opened, the Supreme Court Justice from 
Halifax, Judge Wilkins, Judge Dodd, Sir William Young, Judge 
Bliss, or whoever the judge on circuit for the term happened 
to be, on the morning of the opening of court, as indeed every 
morning while the session lasted, would issue from the hotel, with 
the Sheriff marching before him and various members of the bar 
attending, and so, on foot, proceed formally to the court. If the 
county was so fortunate as not to have any criminal cases for trial, 
it was the custom for the barristers of the county to present the 
judge with a pair of white kid gloves. 

" On winter evenings", proceeds Dr. Calkin, *'the family were 
accustomed to gather round the parlour hearth. There the father 
told the oft-repeated tale of his early efforts at home-making in the 
forest, which even then was so near that the voice of the hooting 



232 KING'S COUNTY 

owl could often at evening be heard. "When he first came there was 
no road for many miles — only blazed trees to mark the way. He 
would tell how he had traversed on horseback the primitive bridle- 
that led to the thicker settlements, his wife behind him on a pillion. 
At first one child had been encircled by the mother's left arm as 
she sat on the horse behind him, holding herself in position by 
throwing her right arm round his waist. When a second child was 
added to the family the eldest sat on the horse's neck in front of 
the father, while the mother held the baby fast. Then the narrative 
would be varied by a thrilling story of a bear hunt. How Bruin 
had killed a sheep or a calf, had been tracked to his lair in some 
forest glen, and had been made to pay the penalty of his wicked- 
ness. Or it may be the evening was passed in telling tales of 
apparitions and ghosts, until every shadow on the wall seemed a 
visitor from the spirit world". To this graphic description the 
writer might have added an account of the apple paring and 
stringing, and pumpkin-cutting, which occupied people in late 
autumn evenings, in almost all farm-houses, the county through. 

Concerning horseback travel before carriages were introduced^ 
Dr. Calkin further writes: "For a woman riding behind a man on 
horseback there was a peculiar sort of saddle called a pillion. ThiS' 
was somewhat like a chair with a foot-rest. An amusing story is- 
told of a good Presbyterian deacon and his wife in old-time Truro, 
who were accustomed to ride together to church. Near the Church 
was a block with steps on it for convenience in getting on and off 
the pillion. One Sunday, so it is said, the worthy deacon, after 
service was over, mounting his horse rode up beside the block,^ 
where his wife was standing ready to take her place on the pillion. 
Probably meditating on the wholesome truths of the sermon, he 
jogged towards home. As he came near his house, which was two 
or three miles from the Church, he met a neighbor who asked him 
in surprise: 'Where's Esther?' 'She's — where is she?' said the 
startled deacon, looking round, first on one side, then on the other. 
He had not given his wife time to mount the pillion and had left 
her standing on the block. Another story is told of a much sadder 



DOMESTIC LIFE 233 

kind, A good Truro couple had to cross the Salmon river in order 
to reach home from church. The river was much swollen by late 
rains, and in the midst of the stream the poor wife slipped off and 
was drowned". 

The subject of slavery in New England and the Canadian 
Provinces is a very interesting one, and it has been ably treated, 
in the tenth volume of the Nova Scotia Historical Society's Collec- 
tions, by the late Rev. Dr. T. Watson Smith. Until after the 
Revolution, many Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island 
people kept slaves, and sooner or later some of these found their 
way to various places in Nova Scotia. In 1783 Colonel Morse, Royal 
Engineer in the province, found in the three townships of Horton, 
Cornwallis, and Parrsborough, as servants to the more independent 
people, a hundred and seven persons, and no doubt part, at least, 
of these servants were Negro slaves. In September, 1751, the Boston 
Evening Post advertised: "Just arrived from Halifax, and to be 
sold, ten strong hearty Negro men, mostly tradesmen, such as 
caulkers, carpenters, sailmakers, and ropemakers. Any person 
wishing to purchase may inquire of Benjamin Hallo well of 
Boston". In 1752, Thomas Thomas, " late of New York, but now of 
Halifax", bequeathed his plate and his Negro servant Orange to 
his son. In the Halifax Gazette of May 15, 1752, Joshus Mauger 
advertised that he had imported and would sell a Negro woman 
aged thirty-five, two boys aged twelve and thirteen, respectively, 
two boys of eighteen, and a man aged thirty. In 1760 the same 
newspaper advertised: "To be sold at public auction, on Monday, 
the 3rd of November, at the house of Mr. John Rider, two slaves, 
viz., a boy and a girl, about eleven years old; likewise a puncheon 
of choice cherry brandy, with sundry other articles"; and in 1769: 
"On Saturday next, at twelve o'clock, will be sold on the Beach, two 
hogsheads of rum, three of sugar, and two well-grown Negro girls, 
aged fourteen and twelve, to the highest bidder". In 1770 the 
executors of the estate of Hon. Joseph Gerrish "announce a loss of 
thirty pounds on three Negroes appraised at one hundred and eighty 
pounds, but actually sold for one hundred and fifty to Richard 
[Williams and Abraham Constable". 



234 KING'S COUNTY 

In 1780 the executors of the estate of Henry Denny Denson, of 
West Falmouth, report that they had received seventy-five pounds 
for a Negro, * ' Spruce ' ', sixty pounds for ' ' John ' ', and thirty pounds 
for ** Juba". In the autumn of the same year, Benjamin DeWolf of 
Windsor offered publicly a handsome reward to any one capturing 
his negro boy, "Mungo", about fourteen years old and well-built, 
and sending the slave home. In 1781 Abel Michener of Falmouth 
offered five pounds for the capture of his Negro, "James". In an 
inventory of the effects of John Porter, *'late of Cornwallis", 
deceased, in 1784, are enumerated : ' ' One grain fan, fifteen shillings ; 
one Negro man, eighty pounds ; books, thirty shillings ' '. 

On the 25th of I^cember, 1790, Col. John Burbidge made a 
deed of manumission of his slaves, giving them freedom, but on 
specified conditions. The slaves were : a Negro woman Fanny, a 
boy Peter, aged seventeen years and eight months; a girl Hannah,, 
aged seven years and eight months; a girl Flora, aged two years 
and seven months ; and all the other children that Fanny might 
have before the end of her servitude. The mother of the children,, 
Fanny, was to serve seven years before she should have her free- 
dom; the boy Peter was to have his freedom, and the younger 
children theirs, when they should reach the age of thirty years. 
None of these slaves were to be taken out of the province, but if 
this should happen they should then at once become free. They 
should be taught to read, and when they became free should be 
dismissed with two good suits of clothing, one for Sundays, and 
one for week days. At the same time as his uncle, Henry Burbidge of 
Cornwallis manumitted his slaves under conditions. His man 
Spence was to be free after seven years, his boy Job, who was then 
four years and seven months old, when he should reach the age of 
thirty. These slaves were to be treated exactly as his uncle had 
prescribed that his should be. On St. John's parish register, Corn- 
wallis we find recorded the baptisms of Col. Burbidge 's slaves: 
Hannah, Sept. 28, 1783 ; Peter, July 3, 1786 ; Flora, Aug. 31, 1788 ; 
Charleston, Feb. 13, 1792; Samuel, Feb. 5, 1794; Rosanna, July 3, 
1796. 



DOMESTIC LIFE 235 

In 1801 Mr. Benjamin Belcher in his will made the following 
disposition of his slaves: "I give and bequeath my Negro boy 
called Prince to my son, Stephen Belcher, during his life, after 
that to his eldest surviving son; I give my Negro girl called Diana 
to my daughter, Elizabeth Belcher Sheffield, and after her death 
to her eldest male heir of her body; I give my Negro man named 
Jack, and my Negro boy Samuel, and Negro boy James, and Negro 
girl called Chloe, to my son Benjamin and his heirs, forever ; charging 
these my children unto whom I have entrusted these Negro people 
never to sell, barter, or exchange them or any of them under any 
pretension, except it is for whose bad and heinous offences as will 
not render them safe to be kept in the family, and that to be 
adjudged of by three Justices of the Peace in said Township, and 
in such case on their order they may be sold and disposed of. And 
I further request that as soon as these young Negroes shall become 
capable to be taught to read, they shall be learned the Word of 
God". 

In 1809 Jonathan Sherman of Cornwallis, who in Rhode 
Island in 1768 had married Sarah Harrington, and after that had 
come to Cornwallis, in his will prescribed that his wife and daugh- 
ter should maintain comfortably during her life his Negro woman 
Chloe, "should she remain with them as heretofore". In 1787, 
John Huston of Cornwallis, gives and bequeaths to his dear and well 
beloved wife, his Negro man Pomp, and all the live stock, utensils, 
and implements, etc., of which at the time of his death, he should 
be owner. In 1776, John Rock, who twenty years before had 
obtained a license to conduct the ferry between Halifax and Dart- 
mouth, died, and among his effects, was a "Negro wench named 
Thursday, who was valued at twenty-five pounds". Soon after- 
ward, Rock's executors sold the slave girl to John Bishop 
for twenty pounds. Whether the buyer was a Horton man or not 
we do not know, but his name suggests that he probably was. A 
few years before his death Rock advertised in the newspaper as 
follows: "Ran away from her master, John Rock, on Monday, the 
18th day of August last, a Negro girl named Thursday, about four 



^a6 KING'S COUNTY 

and a half feet high, broad-set, with a lump over her right eye. 
Had on when she went away a red cloth petticoat, a red baize bed- 
gown, and a red ribbon about her head. Whoever may harbour 
the said Negro girl, or encourage her to stay away from her said 
master, may depend upon being prosecuted as the law directs, and 
whoever may be so kind as to take her up and send her home to her 
said master, shall be paid all costs and charges with two dollars 
reward for their trouble ' '. In 1788 a fierce controversy arose among 
the Presbyterians of Nova Scotia concerning the morality of the Rev. 
Daniel Cock's holding two slaves, a mother and daughter, in the 
village of Truro. In the chapter on the Cornwallis Congregation- 
alist Church, reference is made to the visit in Cornwallis in 
theologically troubled times there, of the Rev. Daniel Cock and the 
Rev. David Smith. At this time, or on some other visit he made to 
Cornwallis, the Truro minister received the elder slave as a gift 
from some person there, we do not, however, know whom. The 
younger slave he is said to have bought. 

In her book, "Customs and Fashions in old New England", Mrs. 
Alice Morse Earle cites the case of a respectable Newport, Rhode 
Island, church elder, who sent many a slaver to the African coast 
and who on the safe return of his ships always gave thanks in 
meeting "that a gracious overruling Providence had been pleased 
to bring to this land of freedom another cargo of benighted heathen 
to enjoy the blessings of a Gospel dispensation". From the care- 
ful provisions made by our Cornwallis slaveholders for the future 
freeing of their slaves we gather that a serious conviction had 
shaped itself in their minds that slavery was not right. In 1784, 
Connecticut passed an act for the gradual emancipation of slaves, 
declaring that all Negroes born in the state after that period should 
be free when they reached the age of twenty-five years, and giving 
masters the right to liberate at once all slaves between the ages of 
twenty-five and forty-five. In 1800 forty-five slaves remained in 
the state, but some time later the legislature declared slavery 
*' extinct and forever abolished". Of the Negroes in Nova Scotia, 
and of the disappearance of slavery in this province Judge Hali- 



DOMESTIC LIFE 237 

burton wrote in 1829: ''A small portion of the labouring popula- 
tion of the country is composed of free blacks, who are chiefly 
employed as agricultural and domestic servants, but there are no 
slaves. Formerly there were Negro slaves, who were brought to 
the country by their masters from the old colonies, but some legal 
difficulties having arisen in the course of an action of trover, 
brought for the recovery of a runaway, an opinion prevailed that 
the courts would not recognize a state of slavery as having a 
lawful existence in this country. Although this question never 
received a judicial decision the slaves were all emancipated. The 
most correct opinion seems to be that slaves may be held in the 
colony; and this is not only corroborated by the construction of 
several English acts of parliament, but by particular clauses of the 
early laws of the province ' '. 

Before we close this chapter a few words must be said con- 
cerning early Freemasonry in King's County. The earliest char- 
tered lodge, St. George's, was opened November 22, 1784, at the 
house of "William Allen Chipman in Cornwallis, a dispensation to 
that effect having been granted by John George Pyke, Grand 
Master of the Grand Lodge of Nova Scotia, to Benjamin Hilton. 
The first officers of St. George's Lodge were: Benjamin Hilton, 
Worshipful Master; Dr. William Baxter, Senior Warden; Samuel 
Wilson, Junior Warden; the two remaining masons present at the 
opening being John North and John Smith. The same night. Dr. 
Samuel Willoughby was initiated; later Dr. Willoughby became 
Junior Warden. The lodge was registered as No. 11. At the 
second regular meeting under the charter the Worthy Master is 
recorded as having purchased a set of silver jewels for the Master 
and Wardens, at a cost of eighteen shillings and fourpence. 
December 27, 1785, the lodge held its first festival, the day being 
St. John's Day. On that occasion. Brothers Hilton, Baxter, 
Willoughby, North, and Pineo, met in the lodge room and dined. 
This custom was continued by the lodge for a number of years. 

Under the lodge's warrant the first person initiated was Cor- 
nelius Fox of Cornwallis, who was the first regularly installed 



238 KING'S COUNTY 

secretary. The date of his taking the secretaryship was August 7, 
1786. During part, at least, of his incumbency as Eector of St. 
John's Church Cornwallis the Eev. "William Twining was Chaplain. 
The first funeral recorded was that of brother Patrick McMasters, 
who had been shipwrecked and whose body was brought to Corn- 
wallis for burial. The funeral took place January 8, 1798. In the 
same month and year a Past Master's jewel was purchased for Past 
Master Charles Prescott, and also jewels for the Senior and Junior 
Deacons. On the 4th of December, 1809, Past Master's jewels were 
presented by the lodge to Past Masters, Brothers Best, Cummings, 
and Webster. In 1811, the Rev. Theodore Seth Harding of Horton 
received the three degrees of ancient craft Freemasonry in St. 
George's Lodge. Afterward, on several occasions, Mr. Harding 
preached before the lodge on St. John's Day. His first sermon was 
December 27, 1812, the text being: "What manner of persons 
ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness". In May, 
1812, the lodge presented Brother Harding with ten pounds, "pre- 
sumably to help him in his ministerial labours". In April, 1813, the 
lodge removed from Cornwallis to Horton. 

February 7, 1814, Hon. Samuel Chipman was a visitor from 
Virgin Lodge, Halifax. He had been made a mason, in Virgin 
Lodge, December 23, 1813, just six weeks before this visit. At the 
time of his death (in 1891) he was the oldest mason in America, 
being within one month of completing his seventy-eighth masonic 
year. In October, 1816, Perez Benjamin of Horton, who was after- 
wards a representative in the Assembly, was made a mason. In 
September, 1818, the lodge purchased a hearse "for the decent 
carriage of the deceased friends of the fraternity, and for the 
.accommodation of the people of Cornwallis and Horton". Some 
six years later the hearse was sold at public auction, but the pall 
was kept. In May, 1827, Ephraim Clark, G. D. Pineo, and Dr. 
Isaac Webster were voted the distinction of honorary members, the 
first persons ever given this distinction by the lodge. In October, 
1827, the altar and pedestal, in active service thereafter until 
November, 1890, were built by Peter Fox, at a cost of four pounds, 



DOMESTIC LIFE 239 

ten shillings. In November, 1830, the lodge removed to Kentville 
and met three times, when it was again removed to Ilorton, meeting 
there at the house of Jonathan Graham. In October, 1830, it met 
at the Kentville Hotel. In April, 1832, it was removed to Peter 
Pineo 's in Cornwallis. 

From December 3, 1832, until January 25, 1858, the lodge never 
met. The reason of the suspension seems to have been that dis- 
satisfaction arose among the members in consequence of dues being 
claimed by the Provincial Grand Lodge, which the Book of Consti- 
tutions received from England did not sanction. During this long 
intermission the original warrant was never forfeited, and when 
in January, 1858, it was decided to reopen the lodge, Brother 
Eliphalet Fuller went to the house of Brother Peter Pineo, in West 
Cornwallis, and got the ark and furniture. Taking these to Lower 
Horton, he and Brothers John and Cornelius Fox, the latter having 
been members in 1832, opened the ark. The aprons, collars, etc., 
they found in good preservation, the pedestals, altar, and candle- 
sticks, however, being broken and defaced After this the lodge 
met for some years at Temperance Hall, in Lower Horton. In April, 
1862, it moved to Wolfville, where it has since remained. An inter- 
esting relic of the lodge is a Worthy Master's Chair, made by 
Brother James Cochran from the wood of an oak tree cut on the 
farm of a brother mason, who had grown it from an acorn, and had 
presented it in 1878. The earliest masonic lodges in Nova Scotia 
in the order of their foundation were: St. Andrews, Chartered as 
No. 118, March 26, 1768; St. John's, as No. 161, June 30, 1780; 
Virgin, as No. 3, October, 1784 — all in Halifax ; St. George 's, as No. 
11, November 22, 1784. 



CHAPTER XY 
THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 

Organized religion in Nova Scotia began with the Koman 
Catholic missions established among the French and Indians soon 
after the first European settlement in the province was made. Of 
the Jesuit and RecoUet, or Franciscan, priests who long laboured 
among the Micmacs and later became so great a power with the 
Acadian French it would be interesting to know who was the first 
to celebrate the rites of Christianity within the limits of King's 
County. This, however, we shall probably never know, but in 
another chapter we have given as complete a list as we could of the 
priests who ministered in the churches at Grand Pre and River 
Canard. In the first Assembly of the province, in 1758, it had been 
enacted that the worship of the Church of England should be con- 
sidered the fixed form of worship in Nova Scotia, but that all dis- 
senters from the Church, save "Papists", should have free liberty 
of conscience, and "might build meeting houses for public worship 
and choose and elect ministers for carrying on Divine Service and 
administering the Sacraments according to their several opinions". 
The long continued work in Nova Scotia of the famous English 
missionary society, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 
in Foreign Parts (commonly known as the S. P. G.), began with the 
founding of Halifax. With the Cornwallis fleet came from Eng- 
land two clergymen, the Rev. William Tutty and the Rev. William 
Anwell, and a schoolmaster, Mr. Edward Halhead. Following them 
came the Rev. Jean Baptiste Moreau, who was at once sent to 
Lunenberg; while not very long after, the Rev. John Breynton, an 
English clergyman who had been chaplain on a war ship at the 
siege of Louisberg, assumed the rectorship of St. Paul's Church, 
Halifax. In 1754 the Rev. Thomas Wood was sent from New Jersey 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 241 

to assist Dr. Breynton, and when the New England planters came 
to King's County, Dr. Breynton and Mr. Wood were sharing the 
arduous labours of the parish of St. Paul's. 

In 1761 the Society appointed the Rev. Joseph Bennett, prob- 
ably a New England man, then in his thirty-fourth year, itinerant 
missionary in the province, with instructions, however, to officiate 
chiefly at Lunenburg. Not knowing of the Society's appointment, 
the lieutenant-governor, Mr. Jonathan Belcher, had meanwhile 
appointed Eev. Robert Vincent to Lunenburg. Mr. Bennett's head- 
quarters, therefore, had to be fixed in some other place. As soon as 
the New England planters were fairly established in King's County, 
the Halifax clergymen. Dr. Breynton and Mr. Wood, had begun to 
make them visits. Sometime in 1762, as the S. P. G. Reports inform 
us, Mr. Wood visited the "interior parts of Nova Scotia", going 
twice to East and West Falmouth, Cornwallis, and Horton, at each 
of, which places, he was kindly received. At the beginning of this 
same year, Mr. Belcher had recommended to the Society that a 
resident missionary should be appointed for Horton, to officiate in 
rotation there and in the townships of Cornwallis, Falmouth, and 
Newport. A house for public worship, he said, was much needed at 
Horton, and he proposed that a chapel should be built there which 
the Calvinistic settlers, as well, could use for Congregationalist 
services if they should settle a minister of their own denomination. 
Mr. Bennett being without a settlement, on the lieutenant-gover- 
nor's recommendation was now appointed missionary in the four 
townships of Newport, Falmouth, Horton and Cornwallis, and in 
November,1762, with the promise of seventy pounds sterling a 
year, took up his residence somewhere (it seems probable at Fal- 
mouth) in his large field. 

About Fort Edward (Piziquid) there were a few English 
speaking people, but the group, including soldiers, must have been 
small, and in all the four townships, except at the Windsor fort, 
there were not more than 766 resident adults. That in spite of their 
Calvinistic Congregationalist sympathies the King's County people 
generally took kindly to the Prayer Book worship, is clear from the 



242 KING'S COUNTY 

fact that in 1763 Mr. Bennett reported that the Cornwallis people 
purposed "building a Church", and that the Horton people had 
already started a subscription for ** purchasing a house to hold 
service in". In a letter to the Society, dated January 4, 1763, he 
states that he has now been settled in King's County six weeks, and 
that he finds in Horton 670 persons, of whom 375 are children; in 
Cornwallis 518, of whom 319 are children; in Falmouth 278, of 
whom 146 are children; and in Newport, 251 of whom 111 are 
children. In still another letter, dated July of the same year, he 
writes that his success in his mission has far exceeded his expecta- 
tion. He has already baptized sixteen and married three couples, 
and he has eighteen communicants. In September he writes that he 
now officiates at five places, for the governor has ordered him **to 
take Fort Edward in rotation on account of a difficult and dan- 
gerous river, which renders it impossible, at least five months in 
the year, for the inhabitants near that fort to attend Divine "Worship 
at the place appointed". To perform the regular duties of his 
mission on Sundays he was obliged to ride nearly two hundred 
miles a month. In the preceding half year he had baptized fifty-two 
children and one adult, and he says that as the prejudices of the 
people against the Church wear off, the duties of his ministry 
increase. 

In 1768-9 he writes still more optimistically of his mission, 
especially of his Cornwallis field. That township he visits once a 
month and one of the means he has taken to win its people to the 
Church, has been to distribute widely a little tract entitled ''The 
Englishman Directed in the Choice of his Religion". This tract the 
people have gratefully received, and he is sure that it has done 
good. About Horton he has nothing to say, but the Cornwallis 
young people, he writes, attend church very regularly. 

In 1770 he reports that at Windsor and Falmouth he has large 
congregations; "that at Newport, where it is very inconvenient for 
the people to assemble to Divine Worship, by reason of that town's 
being intersected by deep and dangerous rivers, he officiates in pri- 
vate houses". In January, 1763, writes Professor Hind in his "Old 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 243 

Parish Burying Ground ' ', Mr. Bennett took up his residence at Fort 
Edward, and there when ill-health at last compelled him to resign 
his work in the province, he lived, and probably died. In the S. P. 
G. Report for 1780 it is stated that ''the Society have received the 
sad intelligence that the Rev. Mr. Bennett is confined at Windsor, 
greatly disordered both in body and mind, so that the physicians 
are of opinion that he will never again be serviceable". How soon 
after this report this missionary died we do not at present know. 

In 1775 an exchange was effected between another missionary, 
the Rev. "William Ellis, and the Rev. Mr. Bennett, the former taking 
the wide King's County mission, and the latter becoming an 
itinerant missionary in the province. In 1776 Mr. Ellis reports his 
communicants at Windsor as sixteen, at Newport nine, at Falmouth 
eleven, and at Cornwallis eighteen. He complains that there is no 
church building at Newport or Falmouth, and that the building at 
Windsor, "which is called a church, is applied to various purposes, 
and occasionally to very improper ones". Although Governor 
Legge had made a present of very handsome church furniture to the 
Windsor congregation the furniture could not be made use of, the 
church building being quite unfit to receive it. 

In 1779 Mr. Ellis writes the Society that in Cornwallis alone 
there are upwards of a thousand inhabitants, most of them well 
affected to the Church and very desirous of having a minister ta 
themselves. That year the Rev. Jacob Bailey of Pownalborough^ 
Maine, so well known in Loyalist annals as the "Frontier Mis- 
sionary", after suffering incredible hardships in New England took 
refuge with his family in Halifax, and very soon was permitted by 
the Governor to go to the assistance of Mr. Ellis in his laborious 
field. "I have made an excursion into the country", he writes his 
brother at Pownalborough under date of Sept. 6th, 1779 "and 
travelled through all the fine settlements on the Basin of Minas, 
and never beheld finer farms than at Windsor, Falmouth, Horton, 
and Cornwallis. The latter is the place where the Neutral French 
had formerly their principal habitation. I have dined upon the very 
spot wtere Charles (Rene) le Blanc formerly lived. Two hundred 



^44 KING'S COUNTY 

families are settled in this place and I am invited to officiate among 
them this winter, and believe I shall accept their offer till I can 
return to Kennebeck in safety. They have agreed to furnish me 
with an house and firing, to give me an horse worth ten guineas, to 
be at the expense of my removal, and to allow me a weekly con- 
tribution besides presents, which will amount to more than seventy 
pounds sterling per year, if I reckon the price at Halifax. I have 
likewise had an invitation to St. John's and Cumberland. In the 
latter department I might be admitted Chaplain of the garrison, 
"w^orth a hundred and eighty pounds per annum, but I cannot en- 
dure the thoughts of that remote situation, especially among a set 
of people disposed to revolt". 

Mr. Bailey's engagement with the Cornwallis people and his 
residence in the township began in October, 1779, and in Cornwallis 
he remained until July, 1782, when he was transferred to the mis- 
sion at Annapolis Koyal. In Cornwallis he experienced a good deal 
of disappointment. "My emoluments are small", he writes a 
friend, "I am allowed a little, inconvenient house and fire-wood, 
and get besides, five or six shillings per week contribution for preach- 
ing. I have about ten or twelve scholars which afford me about 
eight dollars per month. Every necessary of life is extremely dear 
in this place". In 1780 he writes that he has lately, without any 
solicitation on his part, been appointed "deputy chaplain to the 
84th Regiment, part of which keep a garrison at Annapolis". His 
report to the S. P. G. in the same year states that he has officiated in 
Cornwallis every Sunday since his arrival there, and had had "a 
decent and respectable, though not a large congregation". 
^' Their contributions towards my support", he says, "are pre- 
carious, and all the articles of subsistence are so excessively extrava- 
gant that my emoluments will hardly support my family. The want 
of books is a misfortune I sensibly feel in my present situation, for 
I was constrained to leave my library behind me when I escaped 
from New England, and being so remote from the metropolis I can 
receive no assistance from others". 

In July, 1782, Mr. Bailey left Cornwallis for Annapolis, and 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 245 

when minister and people at last had to part," the scenes", he writes 
"were affecting, mutual effusions of sorrow were displayed, and our 
hearts were agitated with tender emotions. Once I imagined it impos- 
sible to abandon Cornwallis with such painful regret, and conceived 
that we could bid the inhabitants adieu without a single tear of 
sensibility on either side, but I found myself mistaken. Justice and 
gratitude compel me to entertain a more favourable opinion of these 
people than formerly, and their conduct has appeared in a much 
more amiable light at the conclusion than at the beginning of our 
connection. Most of my hearers, and several of other denomina- 
tions, made us presents before our emigration, and we were at no 
expense for horses and carriages". 

On the eve of his departure from Cornwallis, as he writes to a 
friend, Mr. Bailey was invited to officiate in the Congregationalist 
Meeting House at Chipman's Corner, and there he read prayers and 
delivered two sermons to a more numerous assembly than he had 
ever seen in the province. Most of the inhabitants, of every denom- 
ination, attended these services, a "very handsome collection" was 
taken for the retiring clergyman, and the people "seemed to 
relish ' ' his farewell discourses. "With the detailed information thus 
given us of this clergyman 's leave-taking of Cornwallis, we have no 
reason to question the truth of Mr. Ellis' statement to the Society 
that "Mr.Bailey's leaving Cornwallis was not without the greatest 
regret of the inhabitants". 

The time had now fully come for the large double mission of 
Hants and King's to be divided, and soon after Mr. Bailey's removal 
to Annapolis the division was formally made. By this change the 
three townships which now composed the newly erected Hants 
County, became one mission; the other included the townships of 
Cornwallis, Horton, and Wilmot, most of the third township, how- 
ever, lying in the eastern part of Annapolis County. On the 
division, the Cornwallis people signified to the Society that the Rev. 
John "Wiswall, formerly missionary at Falmouth, Maine, would be 
to them a very acceptable priest. Accordingly, the Society 
appointed Mr. Wiswall to the King's County mission. "With the 



246 KING'S COUNTY 

life and character of this clergyman we have almost as intimate an 
acquaintance as with that of his predecessor at Cornwallis, the Rev. 
Jacob Bailey. Like Mr. Bailey, Mr. Wiswall was for some years 
before taking orders in the Church of England a Congregationalist 
minister. He was the son of Peleg and Elizabeth (Rogers) Wiswall 
of Boston, his maternal grandmother was Sarah, daughter of John 
Appleton of Ipswich, and he was a graduate of Harvard of the class 
of 1749. During the Revolutionary War he suffered greatly for his 
allegiance to the crown, and at last, like many others of the dis- 
tressed Loyalists, made his home permanently in Nova Scotia. His 
pastorate at Cornwallis began on the 24th of August, 1783, and 
lasted until 1789, when the Bishop having made several important 
changes in the Nova Scotia missions, one of which was the separa- 
tion of Wilmot from Cornwallis and the erection of Wilmot and 
"the best part of Aylesford" together into a new mission, Mr. 
Wiswall by his own preference was transferred to the latter. In 
the now greatly narrowed Cornwallis field he was succeded by the 
Rev. William Twining, a clergyman born in Pembrokeshire, Wales, 
in 1750, who had lately come to Nova Scotia from Exuma, in the 
Bahama Islands, where he had for some time been a missionary of 
the S. P. G. 

The Report of the Society for 1789, describing the Bishop's 
changes remarks that "the remaining mission of Cornwallis, being 
forty miles in length, by fourteen in breadth, the best settled part of 
the province will still be large enough for one mission". "The 
people of Cornwallis have expressed their gratitude to the Society 
for its constant care and attention in supplying them with able 
missionaries and, as appears from a letter from Mr. Burbidge, who 
with Mr. Belcher is a principal supporter there of the Established 
Church, they are much satisfied with the appointment of Mr. 
Twining, and evidence their respect for him by a constant atten- 
dance on Divine Service every Sunday, when the weather will 
permit. The congregation increases, and Mr. Twining hopes that 
the subscription will also in another year". 

Until 1770 the parishioners of St, John's Church, Cornwallis, 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 247 

must have worshipped either in private houses or in some temporary- 
building ; in that year, however, the first Anglican Church building in 
the county was erected at Fox Hill, near the Town Plot. The struc- 
ture was built, and probably the land given, by Messrs, John 
Burbidge and William Best, two men reared, not in New England 
but in the mother land, and about the church was an acre of ground 
given for a churchyard. Of churches built in the county before this 
time, we have the Congregationalist church at Chipman's Corner, 
erected in 1767- '68, and the Presbyterian church at Lower Horton, 
built probably a little later, but very nearly at the same time. In 
the churchyard at Fox Hill, now in many places thickly overgrown 
with bushes, the graves of a few of the most important of the early 
King's County people, with well preserved tombstones, may still 
be found. 

Until 1776 St. John's Church was not finished, but from the 
time of its erection it was used for worship in fair weather, when- 
ever the missionaries could get to Cornwallis to officiate, this, 
however, being at first probably not more than five or six times a 
year, and later only as often as once a month. In 1776 it was 
finished, and in 1784 was repaired. Shortly after Mr. Twining 
assumed the rectorship a gallery large enough to accommodate 
sixty worshippers was built, and when Mr. Benjamin Belcher died 
in 1802, he left two hundred pounds towards "rebuilding an altar 
piece" in the church. By September, 1792, the church was hope- 
lessly out of repair, in winter, at least, it was impossible to use it, 
and again the congregation had to worship in private houses. A 
formal agreement to built a new church was entered into, Septem- 
ber 29th, 1802, and on Christmas Day, 1810, the present church, on 
Church Street, though unfinished was opened for worship. 

Probably as early as the coming of the Rev. Jacob Bailey, the 
Cornwallis congregation had erected or purchased a small par- 
sonage, and when Mr. Wiswall's rectorship began, they added, or at 
least planned to add, to this inadequate house. In 1785 Mr. "Wiswall 
reports that his parishioners have given a proof of their regard for 
him in agreeing to build for him a house on the Glebe, "which in 



248 KING'S COUNTY 

its present condition rents for fifteen pounds per annum". To the 
fund for this house, Col. Burbidge, the Senior Warden, had given 
fifty pounds, Mr. Belcher, the Junior Warden, agreeing to furnish 
the house at his own expense. Shortly after Mr. Twining 's arrival, 
at Cornwallis, this clergyman writes that Col. Burbidge is about to 
complete the parsonage at his own expense. In 1784 the subscribers 
to the parsonage fund were : John Burbidge, Robert Pagan, James 
Burbidge, Col. Jonathan Sherman, David Starr, Thomas Brown, 
William Allen Chipman, Joseph Sibley, Richard Best, William 
Morine, Colin Brymer, Pern Terry, Penderson Allison, Elkanah 
Morton, Jr., Dr. William Baxter, William Marchant, Cornelius Fox, 
Joseph Jackson, Dan Pineo, John Whidden, John North, John Hus- 
ton, John Terry, Thomas Ratchford, Mason Cogswell, Benjamin 
Belcher. 

The Rev. John Wiswall was inducted into the parish by mandate 
from Governor Parr, February 1, 1784, and on the 29th of Septem- 
ber of the same year, a full parish organization was effected. At 
the meeting for organization, Mr. Wiswall being chosen moderator 
nominated Col. John Burbidge, Senior Warden, and Capt. Thomaa 
Farrel (that year the county's High Sheriff), Parish Clerk. Col. 
Burbidge then nominated Lieut. Benjamin Belcher for Junior 
Warden, and Capt. Thomas Ratchford seconded the nomination. 
The vestry chosen were: Capt. John Terry, Capt. Thomas Farrel, 
Lieut. Henry Burbidge, Major Samuel Starr, Mr. David Starr, Mr. 
Joseph Jackson, Mr. John Robinson, Jr., Capt. Thomas Ratchford, 
Capt. John Cox, Mr. Cornelius Fox, Mr. John Burbidge, Jr., 
and Capt. Ebenezer Farnham. [Most of these gentlemen held 
commissions in the militia]. The church, opened for worship 
in 1810, was not finished until 1812, nor consecrated until 
August 9th, 1826, but on the Register remains a plan of the 
interior, with the names of the pew-holders, in 1811. On this 
plan the pews are in four rows, the two middle rows extending only 
to the chancel, the wall pews, north and south, extending to the 
east wall, beside the chancel. The north wall pews were held by the 
following persons: (The Governor's Pew), Elisha Eaton, Jr. (two 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 249 

pews), James Delap Harris, William Charles Moore, Daniel Cogs- 
well, Dr. William Baxter, Samuel Leonard, Samuel Leonard 
Allison, George Chipman, William Starr, William Campbell, 
Coloured People. The south wall pews were held by: (The Bishop's 
Pew), Charles Ramage Prescott, James Allison, Ann Burbidge, 
Sarah Belcher, Edward Sentill, Sarah Jarvis, Elias Burbidge, 
Gideon Harrington, Owen Brien, Charles Eamage Prescott, Coloured 
People. The north middle row were held by: William Campbell, 
William Robinson, Henry Gesner, Dr. William Bayard, Joseph Starr, 
John Terry, Luther Hathaway ; the south middle row by : Ann Bur- 
bidge, James Allison, George Jackson, Benjamin Steadman, Phebe 
Lockwood, Joseph Jackson, David Whidden. This list of pew- 
holders of course gives us exact information as to who the most 
conspicuous adherents of the Church of England in Cornwallis in 
the first quarter of the 19th century were. 

Regarding the three most active lay supporters of the Church 
in its beginning in Cornwallis, a few words may properly here be 
said. Col. John Burbidge, who from 1784 until 1802 was Senior 
Warden of St. John's, and for a longer period than this was prob- 
ably the most influential man in Cornwallis, was an Englishman, 
born in 1716, or '17, in Cowes, in the Isle of Wight. In 1749 he came 
to Halifax, perhaps with the first group of English settlers of that 
town, and in the first, second and third Assemblies of the province 
represented the town. Shortly after 1761, however, having received 
a share and a half of land in Cornwallis, he removed to King's 
County, and thereafter was one of the controlling forces among the 
New England planters who had settled on the Acadian lands. In 
1764 he was appointed Deputy Registrar of Deeds for Cornwallis and 
in the fourth Assembly of the province, from 1765 to 1770, he repre- 
sented the town. In all matters of local government his decisions 
had great weight, and to his intelligence and foresight the early 
agricultural and commercial intersts of the county owed much. His 
first wife, Elizabeth, born in 1720, died in Cornwallis in 1775, and 
was buried in St. John's churchyard j his second wife was Rebecca, 
daughter of the Hon. William Dudley of Boston, grand-daughter of 



250 KING'S COUNTY 

Governor Joseph Dudley of Massachusetts, great-grand-daughter of 
Governor Thomas Dudley, and when Col Burbidge married her, 
widow of Hon. Benjamin Gerrish of Boston and Halifax, a merchant 
of prominence, who died in England, May 6, 1772. Col. Burbidge 
had no children by either marriage, but he brought to Cornwallis 
from Cowes, four nephews, who founded the Burbidge family so 
long known in King's County, and in Canada at large. The opening 
words of the Parish Register of St. John's are: "Historical memo- 
randums taken by John Burbidge, Esquire, during his lifetime and 
continued by him after being elected Church Warden of the Church 
of St. John's, at Cornwallis, in King's County, in the Province of 
Nova Scotia ' '. On a later page of the Register is the statement that, 
''In the year 1770, John Burbidge and William Best, Esquires, at 
their own expense built a small church in said Cornwallis for the more 
decent and convenient performance of Divine Service". Later still 
is this conspicuous entry : ' ' On the 11th of March, 1812, John Bur- 
bidge, Esquire, the great patron of the Church in King 's County for 
upwards of fifty years, departed this life, and on the 14th his 
remains were interred at the old Church, attended by all the magis- 
trates, the militia officers in their uniforms, and the principal 
inhabitants of the County". Mr. Burbidge was a colonel in the 
militia and it was desired by the commanding officer that his 
remains should be interred with military honours. The offer to have 
this done, however, was refused by his relatives. When he died (in 
his 96th year) he was the oldest militia officer, the oldest justice of 
the Court of Common Pleas, and the oldest magistrate in the 
province. The newspaper notice of his death speaks of him as a 
man "revered and loved by all who knew him, for his piety, 
integrity, and benevolence". 

Of William Best, whose name is associated with Mr. Burbidge 
in the building of the church, we know less than we do about the 
latter. He, too, came out to Halifax with the early settlers 
and soon removed to Cornwallis, and he and his family were 
long prominently connected with St. John's Church. But the 
person next in general importance to Col. Burbidge was Mr. Ben- 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 251 

jamin Belcher, founder of the important Belcher family of King's 
County, who was born at Gibraltar, probably of English parents, 
July 17, 1743, and who married in Oornwallis, in 1763 or '64, Sarah, 
daughter of Stephen and Elizabeth (Clark) Post. Like Col. Bur- 
bidge, he was a considerable land-owner and farmer, but he was 
long a prosperous trader, as well. In 1784, as we have seen, he was 
elected Junior Warden of St. John's, and this office he held until 
his death in 1802. From 1785 to '99, Mr. Belcher also represented 
Cornwallis in the legislature. Of other early supporters of the 
Church of England in Cornwallis, however, the Starrs, Steadmans, 
Shermans, Harringtons, Chipmans, Batons, Harrises, Ratchfords, 
Pineos, and others, few had been reared Churchmen, but most had 
in infancy been baptized in New England Congregationalist 
churches. 

The 18th century witnessed in England and America a series 
of great "Revival Movements" in religion, and at last, in the 
spring of 1776, one of these stirring revivals began in Nova Scotia. 
The chief agent of the revival, as we shall hereafter more fully see, 
was Henry Alline, born in New England, but reared in Falmouth, 
King's County, a young man of remarkable gifts, but of slight 
education and little knowledge of life, in whose heart had been 
kindled a burning zeal for religion as he conceived it, and for the 
rescue of souls from hell. Having experienced in his own life a pro- 
found awakening, he soon felt constrained to give himself entirely 
to the work of quickening others, and for seven years, in Hants 
and King's counties, and indeed throughout the Maritime Provinces 
generally, he travelled incessantly, holding stirring revival meet- 
ings, preaching fiery sermons against sin, condemning worldliness in 
the churches, and rousing the country communities to a pitch of 
religious fervour that Nova Scotia had never witnessed before. To 
the sober Church people, and indeed to the more conservative Con- 
gregationalists and Presbyterians of the province, Alline 's irregular 
opinions and methods naturally gave the greatest offense. The 
young man had little respect for traditional Church organization 
or order of any kind, and he took no pains to conceal his belief that 



252 KING'S COUNTY 

most of the clergy labouring in Nova Scotia were still unconverted, 
and so, blind leaders of the blind. The consequence was that with 
some justice, though often with a good deal of misunderstanding, 
the revivalist and his converts came under the severe censure 
of those who had faith in the long established methods of church 
order and church work that the Society for the Propagation of the 
Gospel, and the first New England Congregationalists, had intro- 
duced into the province. In both Hants and King 's counties AUine 's 
preaching resulted in a lamentable schism from the regular Con- 
gregationalist body, and the establishment of "New Light" 
Congregationalist churches, which later became Baptist churches, 
and for some years after the revivalist's death the clergy of the 
Established Church in their reports to the S. P. G. continued to 
deplore the effects of his irregular teaching. 

In 1787, Mr. "Wiswall, in Cornwallis, writes with sorrow of 
**the vast number of Methodists, New Lights, and Lay Teachers", 
whom he finds invading his parish. This clergyman's immediate 
successor, however, the Eev. "William Twining, was evidently less 
out of sympathy with the spirit of the new teachers, for in 1804 the 
Rev. William Black, founder of the Wesleyan body in Nova Scotia, 
writes the Methodist Missionary Society that at Horton, ' ' the princi- 
pal place in his circuit", for several years the Rev. Mr. Twining of 
Cornwallis has preached regularly one in three weeks in the 
Methodist chapel, and has frequently administered the Lord's 
Supper to the Methodist people. Five or six years before, says 
Mr. Black, Mr. Twining had been first brought "to experience the 
converting grace of God"; from which time he had not shunned 
to declare the necessity for regeneration, and warmly to press on 
the consciences of his hearers "this and the other distinguishing 
doctrines of the Gospel." He had frequently been present at the 
meeting of the "class", and had spoken with great humility and 
thankfulness of the grace of Jesus Christ. Sometimes he had 
even conducted the class meeting himself. His attachment to the 
Methodists, and his plain manner of preaching the doctrines of 
the Gospel, hed brought upon him, Mr. Black says, ' ' much reproach. 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 253 

and considerable trials from some from whom he ought to have 
received much encouragement. Benjamin Belcher, Esq., one of his 
vestry, vrho had been his principal opponent and had pre- 
ferred many charges against him to the Bishop, on his death- 
bed had sent for Mr. Twining to pray with him, and in his 
will he left about two hundred pounds towards the building him 
a church". In his own report to the Society in 1803, Mr. Twining 
speaks of the loss the Church had met with in the death of Mr. 
Belcher, whom he calls "a valuable parishioner". Mr Belcher, he 
says, "has bequeathed two hundred pounds toivards building an 
altar piece in the church". 

In 1806 Mr. Twining removed from Cornwallis to Sydney, Cape 
Breton, but some time later he came to Newport and Rawdon, 
Hants County. Of this latter parish he was rector when Bishop 
Charles Inglis died, in 1816. His wife was Sarah, daughter of the 
Rev. Joshua Wingate Weeks, a New England Loyalist clergyman, 
who at the Revolutionary War took refuge in Nova Scotia, and in 
Cornwallis the Twinings had seven children born. The eldest of 
these was afterward the Rev. John Thomas Twining, D. D., curate 
of St. Paul's and the Garrison Chapel, because of attachment to 
whom a number of influential families soon after 1825 seceded from 
St. Paul's Church, Halifax, and gave their influence to the Baptist 
denomination. 

When the Rev. William Twining left Cornwallis the Rev. 
Robert Norris was elected in his place. Mr. Norris was an English- 
man, born in 1763 and ordained, it is said, in the Roman Catholic 
Church. Becoming a Protestant, however, in 1797 he was sent as 
an S. P. G. missionary to Nova Scotia, and very soon after was 
placed at Chester, where he married Lydia, daughter of Dr. Jona- 
than Prescott, and sister of the Hon. Charles Ramage Prescott, who 
was long a resident of Cornwallis and an important parishioner of 
St. John's. From Chester, in 1801, Mr. Norris removed to New 
Brunswick, but in 1806 he came to Cornwallis. What his religious 
temper was may be seen from the report that is given of him when 
he was at Chester. There, it is said, he generally chose for his sermons 
"Gospel themes", endeavoured to give his congregations right 



254 KING'S COUNTY 

apprehensions of the doctrine of Salvation, pointed out to them the 
advantages of peace and union and Christian charity, and "took 
every occasion to remove the prejudices and correct the errors 
which some had fallen into through the influences of the New Lights, 
who prevailed". In the Rectorship of St. John's, Cornwallis, he 
remained until September 15, 1829, when he resigned ; he continued, 
however, to live in Cornwallis until his death in 1834. In the Rec- 
torship of Cornwallis he was at once succeeded by the Rev. John 
Moore Campbell, who remained until 1835. From 1835 till 1838 the 
Rev. John Samuel Clarke was rector; from 1841 to 1876, the Rev. 
John Storrs ; from 1876 to 1879, the Rev. Richmond Shreve (now the 
Rev. Richmond Shreve, D. D., of Sherbrooke, Diocese of Quebec) ; 
from 1879 to 1903, the Rev. Frederick J. H. Axford. In 1903 the 
present efficient rector, the Rev. T. C. Mellor, began his work. 

MISSIONAEIES AT CORNWALLIS 

Rev. Joseph Bennett 1761—75 

Rev. William Ellis 1775—79 

Rev. Jacob Bailey 1779— '82 

RECTORS OF ST. JOHN's, CORNWALLIS 

Rev. John Wiswall 1782— '89 

Rev. William Twining 1789—1806 

Rev. Robert Norris 1806— '29 

Rev. John Moore Campbell 1829— '35 

Rev. John Samuel Clarke 1835— '38 (July) 

Rev John Storrs 1841— '76 

Rev. Richmond Shreve 1876— '79 

Rev. Fred'k J. H. Axford 1879—1903 

Rev. T. C. Mellor 1903— 

During the absence in England of Rev. John Storrs, 1874- '76^ 
the Revds. Robert F. Brine and H. Sterns, successively, took 
(the Rector's place. 

Of the work of the earliest English Church missionaries on the 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 255 

Horton side of the Cornwallis river we know very little in detail. 
Until late in the first quarter of the 19th century no parish 
organization existed in the township of Horton, and although the 
Cornwallis rectors officiated with more or less frequency there, very 
few references to their labours are to be found in their reports to 
the S. P. G. In 1785 Mr. Wiswall was officiating once a month in 
the Baptist Meeting House at what is now Wolfville, but in 1786 he 
reports that he has but two communicants in his Horton mission. 
In Horton, between August, 1783, and June, 1786, he had married 
three couples, baptized three persons, and buried two. As late as 
1804, as we have seen from the Eev. William Black's letter, Mr. 
Twining was officiating once in three weeks in the Grand Pre 
Methodist Chapel. 

Of the formal constitution of the parish of St. John's, Horton, 
no record whatever remains in the parish itself. In 1813 there was 
a survey made of the marsh belonging to the Horton glebe, on 
behalf of the Eev. Robert Norris, who was then called "Missionary 
of Cornwallis and Horton". Our earliest intimation of the organ- 
ization of a parish at Horton comes from the record of a deed of 
one acre of ground (for thirty pounds) given by Stephen Brown 
DeWolfe to Bishop Stanser, January 1, 1817, and the gift to the 
parish by the S. P. G., through the Rev. Robert Norris, missionary 
in charge, of a large Bible, in 1818. The parish was therefore 
probably organized in 1817, and the church building erected very 
soon after. It is said that Thaddeus Harris, of Kentville, for some 
years after the parish was organized acted as clerk of the vestry, 
but somewhere about the middle of the 19th century his father's 
store in Kentville was burned, and whatever records he kept, 
with other public records of Horton township, were probably 
then destroyed. The earliest records of the parish now in existence 
are of the year 1823, at which time the Rev. Joseph Wright was 
Rector. The earliest baptism Mr, Wright records was, July 27th, 
1823, and the earliest marriage was August 16th of the same year. 
The last entry made by this clergyman is a burial on the 3rd of 
September, 1829. It is therefore probable that Mr. Wright was the 



256 KING'S COUNTY 

first Rector of Horton and that he was inducted into the parish about 
the time his first entry was made. 

On the 1st of January, 1830, Mr. Wright was succeeded by the 
Rev. John Samuel Clarke, of a family that had early settled in 
Halifax, who in 1835 also assumed the rectorship of St. John's 
parish, Cornwallis. When Mr. Clarke came to Horton the Rev. John 
Moore Campbell was Rector of Cornwallis, but owing, it is said, to 
a reduction in the grant of the S. P. G. to the latter parish, by which 
act the clergyman's stipend became less, in 1835 Mr. Campbell 
resigned at Cornwallis and went to Granville. To the Cornwallis 
rectorship, also, the Rev. Mr. Clarke was then elected, and this 
double office he held until July, 1838, when by his removal from the 
diocese both parishes became vacant. What priests have ministered 
to the two King's County parishes during the immediately follow- 
ing three years we do not know; but the next rector to be settled 
over them was the Rev. John Storrs, a clergyman born in Yorkshire, 
England, but at the time of his appointment, curate at St. George's 
Halifax, who assumed the double rectorship in April, 1841. As 
rector of both Cornwallis and Horton, Mr. Storrs remained until 
1876, when after two years' absence in England he resigned and 
settled permanently in the mother land. On his retirement the Rev. 
Richmond Shreve succeeded to the Cornwallis rectorship, but the 
Horton parish once more began under a separate head. 

Originally, as we know, the chief point in the township of 
Horton was what is now Grand Pre, but as the western part of this 
township and the eastern part of Aylesford became more thickly 
populated, the village of Kentville attained the dignity of the 
county town. With the steady growth of Kentville in importance 
the interests of the Church in Horton naturally came to centre there, 
and in 1843- '46, a "Chapel of Ease," under the name of St. James, 
was erected in Kentville. The parish church was still St. John's, 
at Wolfville, but the number of worshippers at Kentville was now 
so considerable that the need of a resident clergyman at this place 
became imperative. In 1855, therefore, as is recorded on the parish 
registers of both Cornwallis and Horton, "the District of St. James, 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 257 

Kentville, was set off from the parishes of Cornwallis and Horton as 
a separate charge, by written agreement between the Rev. John 
Storrs and the Eev. Henry. Leigh Yewens, dated 12th day of April. 
1855. The sanction oi his Lordship the Bishop to said agreement, 
and the separation of the District of St. James, Kentville, was 
signified home (probably to the S. P. G.) by letters. Date the 2nd 
of May, 1855." This agreement is signed by Harry Leigh Yewens, 
"Missionary in charge of the District of St. James, Kentville". 

The first services in the Kentville "Chapel at Ease" were prob- 
ably conducted with more or less frequency by the Rev. Mr. Storrs, 
possibly assisted by temporary curates. From March 28, 1852, to 
early in August of the same year, the Rev. James Johnstone Ritchie, 
afterward Rector of St. Luke's Church, Annapolis Royal, as "assist- 
ant curate" ministered at Kentville, and the parish register (now 
at Wolfville) records baptisms and burials performed by him there. 
When Mr. Ritchie left Kentville, the Rev. Harry Leigh Yewens, 
born in London, England, who had first come to Nova Scotia in the 
autumn of 1848, and for some time before he settled in King's had 
ministered at Shubenacadie and adjacent places, was at once 
installed in his place. In 1853 he was advanced to the priesthood in 
St. Paul's, Halifax, and his work as a priest in Cornwallis then at 
once began. When the District of St. James, Kentville, was set off, 
he left Cornwallis to become "missionary in charge" of this field, 
and here he remained until 1863, when after eight years of intelli- 
gent and faithful service he resigned and went to Digby. His first 
recorded baptism at Kentville was on the 1st of June, 1855, and the 
last during his ministry was that of his daughter, Katherine Agnes, 
performed not by himself but by Rev. John Storrs, on the 4th of 
March, 1863. Mr. Yewens' wife was Katherine, born in 1827, fourth 
child of Thomas Blake, Esq., a retired Commander in the Royal 
Navy who had settled at Shubenacadie in 1839. From the beginning 
of Mr. Yewens' ministry at Kentville, the District of St. James, 
while not an organized parish, had almost the autonomy of a parish. 
By whom during this clergyman's incumbency services were held 
at Wolfville we are not informed, but the officiating clergyman 



258 KING'S COUNTY 

there was more probably Mr. Storrs than the Kentville missionary 
in charge. 

A few weeks after Mr. Yewens left Kentville for Digby the 
Rev. John Owen Ruggles, M. A., was appointed in his place. Mr. 
Euggles who was a great-grandson of Brigadier-General Timothy 
Ruggles, the noted Massachusetts Loyalist, was graduated from 
King's College, Windsor, in 1859. He was still in deacon's orders, 
but the next year after he came to Kentville he was ordained priest. 
For eight years, one of the most faithful clergymen the county 
has ever had, he laboured in Kentville and the country around, but 
early in 1871 he resigned his King's County charge and went to 
St, Margaret's Bay. During May and June, 1871, the Rev. Edward 
Scaummell officiated at Kentville, but from August of that year 
until November, 1876, the Rev. Theophilus Richey was minister. 
When Mr. Storrs resigned the double rectorship of Cornwallis and 
Horton, the District of St. James seems to have become absorbed 
by the Parish of Horton, the Rev. J. Lloyd Keating, a native of 
Halifax, being called to the Horton rectorship. In about a year Mr» 
Keating resigned, and early in 1878 the Rev. John Owen Ruggles 
was recalled to the county, this time as Rector of Horton and not 
merely missionary in charge of Kentville. For ten years, until 1888, 
this devoted clergyman ministered with unflagging interest to his 
large parish, but in 1888 he retired from pastoral work and opened 
a church bookstore in Halifax. In 1889 the Rev. Isaac Brock, D. D., 
accurate scholar and faithful priest, some time President of King's 
College, and later Canon of St. Luke's Cathedral, Halifax, was 
elected in his place. In 1893 the parish of St. James, Kentville, with 
fixed boundaries, was formally set off from the parish of Horton, 
and the Rev. Dr. Brock was elected its first rector, the Rev. Kenneth 
C. Hind becoming rector of the old parish of Horton. For more 
than six years Dr. Brock faithfully served St. James Parish, but 
January 30, 1900, he resigned and on the 25th of July of the same 
year, the present incumbent, the Rev. Charles DeWolfe White, 
became rector. In 1899, the Rev. Richard Ferguson Dixon, born at 
Houghton Hall, Cumberland, England, for two years previously 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 259 

Rural Dean of Avon, a governor of King's College, and former 
editor of Church Work, was elected to the rectorship of Horton, and 
this position he still holds. 

The act of the legislature, passed April 28, 1893, which divided 
the parish of Horton, prescribed that the parish of Kentville should 
comprise all the territory west of the ''Deep Hollow Road", south 
to the county line, and north to the Cornwallis river. The Rectory 
of St. James, Kentville, was built in 1854. 

RECTORS OF HORTON 

Rev. Joseph Wright 1823 (probably)— '29 

Rev. John Samuel Clarke 1830— '38 

Rev. John Storrs 1841— '76 

Rev. J. Lloyd Keating 1877— '78 

Rev. John Owen Ruggles 1878— '88 

Rev. Isaac Brock, D. D. 1889— '93 

Rev. Kenneth C. Hind 1893— '99 

Rev. Richard Ferguson Dixon 1899 — 

MISSIONARIES-IN-CHARGE OP ST. JAMES, KENTVILLE 

Rev. Harry Leigh Yewens 1855 — '63 

Rev. John Owen Ruggles 1863—71 

Rev. Theophilus Richey 1871— '76 

RECTORS OF ST. JAMES, KENTVILLE 

Rev. Isaac Brock, D. D. 1893—1900 

Rev. Charles DeWolfe White 1900— 

When the first Anglican missionary may have visited Parrs- 
borough we do not know, but the earliest settled clergyman in that 
part of King's County was the Rev. Thomas Shreve (grandfather of 
the Rev. Dr. Richmond Shreve), who was licensed by Robert, 
Bishop of London, "to perform the ministerial office of a priest at 
Parrsborough, in Nova Scotia, in North America", June 6, 1787, 



mo KING'S COUNTY 

and who remained at Parrsborough until 1807, when he was insti- 
tuted (August 13th) by Bishop Inglis to the Cure of Lunenburg. 
In the office of the Eegistry of Deeds at Parrsborough is recorded 
the following deed: ''Know all men by these presents, that I, 
Thomas William Moore, of Parrsborough, King's County, Nova 
Scotia, esquire, from the regard and respect I have for the Church 
of England as by law established, and in consideration of a church 
being built and placed on the land hereinafter described, have given 
and granted and do by these presents give and grant and alien unto 
the Reverend Thomas Shreve, the present rector, Edward Cole and 
Elisha Lawrence, esquires, wardens, and unto John Longstreet, 
Edward Potts, Caleb Lewis, John Fordyce, Silas Crane, James Ray- 
mond, William Taylor, Dr. John Mercer (one of the commissioners), 
Archibald McEachern, and Archibald Thompson, Vestrymen; and 
to them and their successors in trust for the sole use and behoof of 
the said Established Church forever, one hundred and fifty acres of 
land, situate lying and being as follows to wit: Beginning at high 
water mark up the river called Partridge or Chignecto, etc., etc. To 
have and to hold the above described premises unto the said rector, 
church wardens, and vestry, in trust aforesaid, to them and their 
successors forever, thereby engaging to warrant and forever defend^ 
the said premises against all persons claiming right to the same. In 
witness whereunto I have hereunto set my hand and seal at Parrs- 
borough, this 12th day of August, A. D., 1788, and in the twenty- 
eighth year of his Majesty's reign, whom God preserve. 

(Signed) Thomas William Moore". 

May 31, 1813, a glebe or minister's lot of 600 acres, and a 
school lot of 400 acres, were given to Parrsborough by the govern- 
ment, but it was largely through the liberal benefaction of Captain 
Moore that the Church was first able properly to establish itself in 
this part of King 's County. In Mr. Shreve 's first report to the S. P. G. 
he says that a church building has been begun at Parrsborough, 
Governor Parr having allotted for the building of it two hun- 
dred pounds. The church is to be forty feet long and twenty-seven 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 261 

feet high, with a steeple fifty feet high, and its location is near 
Partridge Island, the supposed centre of the parish, where the 
Rector himself resides. In this report Mr. Shreve also speaks of 
the great extent of his mission, in which he believes there are about 
a hundred families. Besides Parrsborough, he officiates at Ratch- 
ford Harbour and Half-Way river. In two distinct reports after 
this he announces that the church is nearly completed, but after 
1792, until the end of the century, the Society's reports give us no 
information concerning the Parrsborough parish. 

The church was finished, and consecrated as "St. George's", 
in 1790. The first rector, born probably in New Jersey, was gradu- 
ated at King's College, New York, in 1773, and then began to study 
for orders. When the Revolution broke out, however, he entered 
the King's srvice, in which he served, first as lieutenant, then as 
captain, in the Prince of Wales American Volunteers. When the 
war was over he retired from the army on half pay, and going to 
London was ordained Deacon in April, 1787, and ordered Priest in 
June of the same year. He then came to Nova Scotia and for 
twenty years laboured at Parrsborough, after which, as we have 
seen, he settled in Lunenburg, where, August 21st, 1816, he died. 
Capt. Thomas William Moore, the earliest benefactor of the Church in 
Parrsborough, was also a new York Loyalist. In 1781 he came to 
Parrsborough, where he built a large house, which he named 
"Whitehall", and in which he lived for a few years. Becoming 
tired of Nova Scotia, however, he finally went back to New York, 
leaving in Nova Scotia a son, Col. William Charles Moore, who 
moved from Parrsborough to Cornwallis and there founded the 
well-known Moore family of King's County, which afterwards 
became more closely identified with Horton. Capt. Moore 's daughter, 
Rachel Lane Moore, became the wife of William Campbell, Esq., long 
Judge of Probate for King's County, and like Col. William Charles 
Moore, a parishioner of the Cornwallis Church of St. John, The list 
of Rectors of Parrsborough (so far as we have been able to compile 
it) to the present time is as follows : 



KING'S COUNTY 

RECTORS OF PARRSBOROUGH 

Rev. Thomas Shreve 1787—1807 

? ? ? ? 

Rev. George Morris 1823— '27 

Rev. W. B. King 1830— '31 

? ? '■, ■ ? ? 

Rev. N. A. Coster 1836— '42 

Rev. Robert Arnold 1843— '45 

Rev. W. H. Cooper 1846 

Rev. W. B. King 1846— '75 

Rev. Robert F. Brine 1875— '78 

Rev. Charles Bowman, D. D. 1878— '88 

Rev. Simon Gibbons 1888— '96 

Rev. John Ambrose, D. D. 1897 

Rev. Robert Johnston 1897—1900 

Rev. William Driffield 1900— '04 

Rev. H. J. Johnston 1905— '07 

Rev. George Backhurst 1907 — 

Like Parrsborough, the township of Aylesford was settled 
chiefly after the close of the American Revolutionary War. Until 
1789 Wilmot, in Annapolis county, and the whole township of 
Aylesford, which lay between Wilmot and Cornwallis and Horton, 
was part of the large King's County mission, and occasionally we 
find mention in the Society's reports of work done in the western 
part of this enormous field. Such mention, however, is chiefly of 
Wilmot, where between August, 1783, and June, 1786, Mr. Wiswall 
reports that he had had seven baptisms; in 1787, however, in that 
township he had had twenty-eight baptisms. In 1789, as we have seen, 
the best part of Aylesford was united with Wilmot in a separate 
mission, and the Rev. Mr. Wiswall, removing from Cornwallis, 
became its minister. 

Of his new field, in 1791 Mr. Wiswall gives the Society a rather 
dreary account. He says that that part of the province, "though 
the finest land, and most healthy and pleasant of any in Nova Scotia, 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 263 

is yet but thinly settled, and by those who in general are vei'y poor, 
living mostly in huts, having none of the conveniences and few of 
the necessaries of life, and being so long habituated to what may 
be called a savage life that it is very difficult to civilize them ' '. The 
past winter he says, had been so severe that he had been prevented 
for four Sundays from getting to the Aylesford church. Perhaps on 
account of the severe weather, in half a year he had had only three 
children brought to him for baptism. In this time he had married 
seven couples, and had attended one funeral. The settlers, of whose 
character he speaks in such a deprecating way, were chiefly com- 
mon soldiers who had served on the British side in the Revolution, 
and with many of the officers who had commanded them, when the 
war was over had come to Nova Scotia and from the government or 
from private owners had obtained small tracts of land. By this 
class certain parts of Wilmot were almost exclusively settled. 

In Upper Aylesford, however, as we have seen, late in the 18th 
and early in the 19th century there were not a few settlers of a very 
much higher class. In 1783 Mr. James Morden, an Englishman, 
ordnance storekeeper at Halifax, received a grant of five thousand 
acres in Aylesford, and very soon after fixed his summer residence 
there. In 1790 Bishop Charles Inglis also received land in Aylesford, 
and he too soon built in that township a summer house. In 1814 
Henry VanBuskirk, formerly of New Jersey, received a grant of 
land in the township, and thereafter for many years he was a 
prominent person in the town. In 1790, chiefly through the exer- 
tions and benefactions of Mr. Morden, a church called St. Mary's 
was built at Aylesford, of which we have a detailed account in the 
Society's report for that year. It was fifty-seven feet long, includ- 
ing the chancel and steeple, and twenty-eight feet wide, and was 
*'the neatest and best finished Church in the Province". As in all 
the Nova Scotia churches built in the 18th century, one pew was 
set apart in it for the Governor, and one for the Bishop, and over 
their pews the King's arms and the arms of the Nova Scotia See, 
respectively, were handsomely painted. In the steeple was a bell, 
and for the Communion table, Reading Desk, and Pulpit, Commis- 



264 KING'S COUNTY 

sioner Duncan had given a set of silk-damask hangings, probably 
red. To complete the furnishing, Governor Wentworth had given 
the Church "a Bible and Prayer Book, elegantly bound". As an 
endowment for the parish, the governor had granted three hun- 
dred acres for a glebe, and Mr. Morden had given two hundred 
acres. 

In the parish is preserved a copy of a paper, ' ' which was placed 
in the upper ball attached to the vane on the tower" of the church, 
when it was built. The paper records that ''this Church of St. 
Mary's was built in the year 1790, under the patronage of his 
Excellency John Parr, Esq., Lieutenant-Governor of this Province; 
the Eight Eev. Charles Inglis, D. D., first Bishop of Nova Scotia; 
and James Morden, Esq., ordnance storekeeper ; the first minister, 
Eev. John Wiswall; the builder, William Matthews". An article 
on St. Mary's parish, published in the Canadian Church Magazine 
in 1891, says that from Mr. Matthews' bill of construction it is 
learned that the total cost of the building was £475, Is, 5d, the 
amount being obtained as follows: Governor Parr, £222, 4s, 6d; 
various smaller benefactions, £86, 3, 3 ; James Morden, £165, 13, 7. 
"The furnishings of the Church", the writer of this article says, 
*'were all gifts, among others an elegant folio Bible with three 
Prayer Books to match, the gift of Governor Wentworth. In 
addition to the great care and expense at which Mr. Morden had 
been, he gave a deed of the grounds (between five and six acres) 
on which the Church stands, with its surroundings". 

In February, 1791, the parish of Aylesford was duly organized, 
but of the first parochial officers we have not the names. The 
earliest recorded minute of the vestry, however, is of the year 1802. 
On Michaelmas Day of that year, there was a regular meeting of 
the parish held, at which officers were elected and other business 
was transacted. In 1795 Mr. Wiswall writes the Society that he 
had a good congregation at Wilmot, but not at Aylesford. At the 
latter place, Mr. Addison, "the catechist", was very diligent and 
gave great satisfaction. In 1797 he writes that at Wilmot his 
congregation increases, but at Aylesford it grows less. The condi- 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 265 

tion of things at the latter place is made worse by the sympathy 
of some of the Aylesford people with the extravagances of the 
New Lights and Methodists. 

On the ordination, in 1801, of Rev. John Inglis, Bishop Charles 
Inglis' son, as Deacon and Priest, Mr. Wiswall's jurisdiction over 
the parish of Aylesford seems to have ceased, for from that time 
until 1816, when he was elected rector of St. Paul's, Halifax, the 
third Bishop of Nova Scotia was rector of St. Mary's. Not long 
after his ordination, however, he was appointed his father's Com- 
missary, and during much of his rectorship of Aylesford he must 
necessarily have been absent from his parish. In 1806 he was in 
England, and again in 1813. In July, 1804, his first child was born, 
apparently in Halifax, and it would seem that six others of his 
children were born there also. But in St. Mary's parish remain 
fixed traditions of much faithful service performed by him in Ayles- 
ford. " In no case ' ', it is said, ' ' did he spare himself, but continually 
travelling the wilderness paths, either on horseback in summer, or 
on snowshoes in winter, he visited the scattered settlers, relieved 
their necessities (for there was much poverty at that time), prayed 
with the sick, baptized their children, and encouraged all by his 
life and example to follow, as he endeavoured to follow, in the 
footsteps of the Master". 

In spite of these traditions we are compelled to believe that much 
of the time during his fifteen years rectorship of Aylesford Dr. 
Inglis was away from his parish, and we cannot help wondering 
how in his frequent and sometimes long absences the parish needs 
were met. Of his rectorship surprisingly few records remain, but 
of one important fact we are assured from sources outside the 
parish, — on the 23rd of March, 1810, the government increased the 
endowment of the parish by granting to "the Rev. John Inglis, 
D. D., Rector, and Alexander "Walker and Henry VanBuskirk, 
Churchwardens and trustees of the parish", a hundred acres "in 
part of a glebe", and a hundred "in part of a school". In 1816 
Bishop Charles Inglis died, and his son went to England hoping 
to be appointed to the Nova Scotia See. His hopes, however, for 



266 KING'S COUNTY 

the time were disappointed. Instead of the episcopate he received 
from the government the rectorship of the parish of St. Paul's, 
Halifax. His immediate successor at Aylesford was the Rev. 
Edwin Gilpin, born August 8, 1792, at Lower Dublin, Pennsylvania, 
baptized there by Bishop White, admitted to King's College, Nova 
Scotia, in 1814, and probably early in 1816 ordained to the ministry 
and elected Rector of Aylesford. For the first few years of his 
rectorship Mr. Gilpin lived in Wilmot with John Wiswall, Jr. (son 
of the Rev. John "Wiswall), whose daughter, Eliza, October 29, 1817, 
he married. Mrs. Gilpin died in Aylesford, July 5th, 1823, in her 
27th year, and Mr. Gilpin married, second, June 15th, 1827, in 
Trinity Church, Newport, R. I., Gertrude Aleph, eldest daughter of 
Edward and Janet (Parker) Brinley, who died January 17, 1845. 
In 1832 Mr. Gilpin became rector of St. Luke's Church, Annapolis 
Royal, and there he remained until his death twenty-eight years 
later. 

When he had been at Aylesford a few years, Mr. Gilpin ''pur- 
chased the property a great part of which now forms the Rectory 
grounds". During the whole of his ministry in Aylesford it is said 
there was no minister of any other denomination settled in the town- 
ship, consequently in his farewell sermon, holding up his hands he 
was able to say : "With these hands have I baptized every child that 
has been born in the parish during my ministry". Having some 
knowledge of medicine he was able to minister very often to the 
bodily needs of his people; thus in every way he was in King's 
County a faithful and useful minister of Christ. 

In 1832 the Rev. Henry Lambeth Owen became Rector of 
Aylesford, and three years later, Dr. Charles Inglis, son of Bishop 
John, who continued to live in Aylesford until his death in 1861, by 
perseverance secured funds and built a schoolhouse for the parish 
use. In 1847, among other good works which he did, the Rev. Mr. 
Owen started a branch of the Diocesan Church Society in Aylesford, 
thus materially helping the work of diocesan missions. In 1852, at 
the Bishop's request, this clergyman left Aylesford and assumed 
the rectorship of Lunenburg, in which position he remained until 
he died. 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 267 

The next rector of Aylesford was the Rev, Richard Avery, son 
of John and Elizabeth (Simmons) Avery, who was born at South- 
ampton, England, and educated there, at Warminster, and at 
Oxford, his brothers, the Rev. John S. Avery, M. A., and the Rev. 
William Avery, B. A., being chiefly his tutors. Passing the Clerical 
Board of the S. P. G. in London, Mr. Avery was sent out as a Deacon 
to Nova Scotia, and by Bishop John Inglis was given the curacy 
of Lunenburg. In the spring of 1842 he was called as assistant to 
St. Paul's Church, Halifax, and Christ Church, Dartmouth, and in 
September, 1843, was priested and elected rector of Yarmouth. 
Early in 1846 he resigned the parish of Yarmouth, and for the 
next six months was assistant at Digby. For almost two years 
after that, in the absence of the Rev. Dr. Gray, he was locum tenens 
in St. John, N. B. In the spring of 1848, however, he went to Pug- 
wash and Wallace, but in 1852 was elected Rector of Aylesford, to 
succeed Mr. Owen. The duties of St, Mary's, Aylesford, he faith- 
fully performed until January 1, 1887, when with the permission 
of the Bishop and the S. P. G. he retired from active labour, his 
place being filled until May, 1900, successiyely, by the Revs. J. M. 
C. Wade, and G. I. Foster, as vicars. In May, 1900, he resigned 
the parish. Mr. Avery married, first, in Yarmouth, Mary Ann, 
daughter of Gabriel Bydder Van Norden, of Yarmouth, who bore 
him a daughter, Helen, and a son, Dr. William A. Avery; secondly, 
November 22, 1853, in Aylesford (the Rev. Mr. Stamer of Wilmot 
ofiSciating), Lavinia Mary Palmer, of Aylesford, who bore him a 
daughter, Elizabeth Palmer Avery. 

Mr. Avery was a gentlemen of the kindliest spirit and the 
most exact good breeding. The last years of his life were spent at 
Kentville where, esteemed and honoured as he had been through- 
out his whole ministerial career, on the 6th of May, 1900, he passed 
to a better life. In 1900, on his resignation of the parish of Ayles- 
ford, the Rev. G. I. Foster became Rector. From 1901 until Decem- 
ber 31, 1903, the Rev. James Simonds was Rector, and in January, 
1904, the Rev. Henry T. Parlee, M. A., the present faithful incum- 
bent, succeeded to the parish. 



268 KING'S COUNTY 

RECTORS OF AYLESFORD 

Eev. John Wiswall 1791—1801 

Rev. John Inglis, D. D. 1801—16 

Rev. Edwin Gilpin 1816— '32 

Rev. Henry Lambeth Owen 1832— '52 

Rev. Richard Avery 1852—1900 

Rev. G. I. Foster 1900— '01 

Rev. James Simonds 1901 — '03 

Rev. Henry T. Parlee 1904— 

VICAR3 OF AYLESFORD 

Rev. John Moore Campbell Wade 1888— '99 

Rev. G. I. Foster 1899—1900 

A subject of no little interest in connection with the Church 
of England in King's County is the administration of the glebe 
and school lands in Cornwallis and Horton, given by the govern- 
ment in 1761. In the Rector and "Wardens of the several parishes 
of the county, glebe lands of course always have been vested. In 
Cornwallis the glebe has from the first been managed in a careful 
way, but in Horton, it is said, owing to early mismanagement the 
uplands have lost to the Church. The dyke lands, however, are 
still intact, and the revenue from them is enjoyed by the parish of 
Horton. On the creation of St. James parish, Kentville, the division 
of lands then made gave whatever forest lands are still owned by 
the Church to the newer parish, as its share of the original grant. 

As we have elsewhere stated, September 26, 1769, a grant of 
666 acres was given the Rev. Benaiah Phelps, the Cornwallis Con- 
gregationalist minister, as the first minister of any denomination 
to be actually settled in the town. The subsequent history of this 
grant will be alluded to further on. At the same time as Mr. 
Phelps, the Rev. James Murdoch of Horton, Presbyterian, received 
a grant of 500 acres on his own side of the Cornwallis river, but 
whether this clergyman on his removal from Horton sold his land 
or not we do not at present know. In 1761, two shares in Horton, 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 269 

comprising a thousand acres, were given to the Rev. John Breyn- 
ton of Halifax. This was, however, strictly a personal grant. 

The history of the school lands in King's County is too long 
and involved to be given save in the barest outline here. By an 
act passed in 1766 the income from these lands was to be paid by 
such trustees as the governor should appoint "to protect and improve 
them", to the acknowledged schoolmasters of the S. P. G. By an 
act dated December 31, 1790, the Cornwallis school lands were 
vested in the Rev. William Twining and his Churchwardens, 
Messrs. Burbidge and Belcher, as trustees, but by whom the Horton 
lands were to be administered the Nova Scotia "Private and Local 
Acts" do not inform us. In 1813, it is said, all the Nova Scotia 
school lands came directly under the control of the Bishop of the 
Diocese and two other trustees in each parish where they existed, 
which provision seems to have remained indisputedly in force until 
1838. 

"With the gradual broadening of educational methods in the 
province, in 1838 an attempt was made to withdraw the school 
lands from Church control^ but the governor, Sir Colin Campbell, 
positively refused his assent to a bill authorizing a new mode of 
appointing trustees. The next year the right of the Church of Eng- 
land to administer the school lands was brought fully before Her 
Majesty's Government, the provincial legislature then pasing an 
act to vest them all in trustees for the purpose of general euduca- 
tion. This act, however, the British Government refused to 
sanction, and after hearing the opinions of counsel in England as 
to what rights in these lands were held by the S. P. G., ordered that 
all lands then occupied and improved by the Society should be 
preserved to the Church. 

In 1850 the Nova Scotia legislature passed another act, similar 
to the act of 1839, but again strong protest was made to the Queen 
by the S. P. G. Upon this, Earl Gray in a dispatch expressed his 
surprise that the Nova Scotia governor, Sir John Harvey, had 
assented to the bill, and required an explanation from the Attorney 
General. Thus the conflict went on, until at last, as regards the 



270 KING'S COUNTY 

Cornwallis school lands, the matter was brought to the notice of 
the Privy Council. The decision of this body is not at hand, but 
after the erection of the Nova Scotia counties into municipalities in 
1879, the school lands of King's County seem all to have become 
securely vested in the municipality. By an act of the legislature, 
passed April 28, 1893, the trustees of school lands for the time being 
were empowered to sell, if need be, the school lands in Cornwallis; 
and by an act passed March 11, 1895, the school lands in Horton; 
and appropriate the income from such sale to the general purposes 
of education. 

The first S. P. G. schoolmaster in King's County was Mr. 
Cornelius Fox, at Cornwallis, a gentleman born in County Cork, 
Ireland, in 1745. On the 18th of June, 1782, the governor, Sir 
Andrew Snape Hamond, granted a license to Cornelius Fox "to 
occupy and possess that lot of land called the School lot, in the 
township of Cornwallis, containing four hundred acres, so long as 
he shall continue to be employed as schoolmaster by the Society 
in England for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts". Mr. 
Fox left Cornwallis for Sydney, Cape Breton, in 1797, his imme- 
diate successor in Cornwallis being Mr. Matthew McLoughlin. 



CHAPTER Xyi 

THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 

AND THE ALLINE REVIVAL 

The New England planters of Cornwallis and Horton were, 
of course, with hardly an exception, members or adherents of the 
independent Congregationalist churches of the various towns from 
which they had come to Nova Scotia, and one of the matters of 
immediate concern to them must have been the establishment in 
the new townships where their lot was now cast, of the worship 
to which they had always been used. In Halifax, shortly after 
the settlement of that town, there were enough New England 
people of Puritan Congregationalist origin to form a dissenting 
church. Of this church, to which the name "Mather's" was given,, 
the Eev. Aaron Cleveland, who later took Orders in the English 
Church, was the first pastor. Soon after the New England migra- 
tion several other Congregationalist churches sprang up in places 
where New England men had settled, and by the beginning of 
1770 seven Nova Scotia Congregationalist churches had entered on 
their career. These were, at Yarmouth, with the Rev. Nehemiah 
Porter as pastor; at Barrington, with the Rev. Samuel Wood; at 
Liverpool, with the Rev. Israel Cheever ; at Chester, with the Rev. 
John Secombe; at Cumberland, with the Rev. Caleb Gannett; at 
Halifax, with the Rev. William Moore ; and at Cornwallis and 
Horton, with the Rev. Benaiah Phelps. Of these Congregationalist 
ministers, the Rev. Israel Cheever, the Rev. John Secombe, and the 
Rev. Caleb Gannett were graduates of Harvard; the Rev. Benaiah 
Phelps alone was a graduate of Yale. With the exception of Mr. 
Moore, who was a native of Ireland, all were New England born 
men. 



^72 KING'S COUNTY 

The exact date of the founding of the Congregationalist 
'"Church of Horton and Cornwallis" it seems improbable now that 
we shall ever be able to know. For five years after the New 
England planters came to the county they were without settled 
religious ministration; but deeply attached to religion as many of 
them were, it is necessary to suppose that during this time they 
sustained neighbourhood meetings in private houses for lay preach- 
ing or conference, and prayer. In an explanatory letter from Mr. 
Handley Chipman of Cornwallis, one of the most important of the 
King's County planters, written June 30, 1777, to two Presbyterian 
clergymen, Messrs. Daniel Cock and David Smith, who as we shall 
see had come to Cornwallis to try to produce a better state of feeling 
in the church, it is stated that as early as 1761 or '62 the people 
subscribed to send to New England for a minister, and that while 
the question of whether to look for one in Massachusetts or Connec- 
ticut was still under discussion, the Rev. Benaiah Phelps was sent 
to them by an Association of Connecticut ministers. 

As a matter of fact, probably early in 1765, the church or some 
important members of it made formal application to the South 
Hartford Association for a minister, and that year, four years from 
the time of his graduation from Yale, the Rev. Benaiah Phelps was 
ordained especially for this field. The young minister came first to 
Halifax, and Mr. Handley Chipman courteously went from Corn- 
wallis to accompany him to his new field. "When the minister 
reached Cornwallis it was thought best for some reason not to 
settle him at once, but to take him on trial for a year, and this the 
church did. At the end of the year he became the church's regular 
pastor, and in this position remained until probably some time in 
1776. As a whole, the people, glad to be once more under a settled 
ministry, were at first pleased with Mr. Phelps, though Mr. Chipman 
says he himself early had doubts of the sincerity of the young man 's 
attachment to his calling, and was generally not much impressed in 
his favour. The salary promised the minister was eighty pounds a 
year, and there was much discussion as to the proper way of raising 
it, whether by a distinct pledge on the part of the committee repre- 



THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 273 

senting the congregation, by entirely voluntary contributions, or 
by a definite rating of the pews. 

How soon after Mr. Phelps' formal settlement as pastor of the 
church strong opposition to him began to manifest itself we do 
not know, nor are we informed precisely what the grounds of the 
people's dislike of him were. By 1776, however, the feeling against 
him had grown so bitter that he was obliged to withdraw from the 
pastorate, and in 1778 he left the province not to return. The 
culminating reason for the bitterness that followed him when he 
left was he had sold to John Robinson the land granted him Septem- 
ber 26, 1769, as the first minister settled in the town, and had appro- 
priated the money he received for the sale. The grant, which was 
given under the seal of Lord William Campbell, the governor, was 
made out in Mr. Phelps' own name, and he therefore evidently had 
a legal right to sell it, but the people believed that the land had 
been intended for the continual benefit of the church, and they 
regarded the minister as having committed a moral wrong in 
treating it as his own. Mr. Phelps' salary was probably in arrears, 
for as time went on the people 's subscriptions towards it had fallen 
off, and this fact may have seemed to him sufficient justification for 
the course he took in selling the land. Be that as it may, the people 
felt that he had wronged them, and after he had returned to New 
England they appealed to the South Hartford Association to take 
some action toward having the money he had received for it 
refunded. Their appeal, however, was disregarded, and the prog- 
ress of the Eevolution soon stopped all communication of a 
friendly nature between Nova Scotia and the revolted colonies. 
"My father", says Mr. Phelps' son in a biographical notice of the 
clergyman in question, "got into trouble with the Government of 
Nova Scotia and had to leave unceremoniously in 1778". Pre- 
cisely what meaning this statement may have had to the writer 
of it we do not know, but it is said that Mr. Phelps added some- 
what to his unpopularity in Cornwallis by showing decided sym- 
pathy with the revolt against England on the part of his New Eng- 
land friends. In connection with his removal from the Horton and 



274 KING'S COUNTY 

Cornwallis church, the name of one prominent man is still remem- 
bered, the name of Mr. Samuel Starr. Major Starr was from the 
first, in Cornwallis, a person to be reckoned with, and for Mr. 
Phelps he evidently shared the common dislike. Whether he held 
any official position in the Congregationalist Church at this early 
time we do not know, but in 1784, when St. John's parish was 
organized, both he and his younger brother David became vestry- 
men in it, thenceforth probably giving it their exclusive support. 

The difficulty in Cornwallis about raising Mr. Phelps' salary 
was almost from the first so great that the committee charged with 
raising it were sometimes obliged to take money from their own 
pockets to pay it. Finally, on their own authority, without pre- 
senting the matter to the congregation, these men wrote the Rev. 
Dr. Andrew Eliot, third pastor of the New North Church, on Hanover 
Street, Boston, representing their church as very poor and asking 
for help. The preface to their appeal, which was dated November 
8, 1769, in the following way, describes the condition of things in 
the church : ' ' God in his Providence, who orders the bounds of the 
habitation of his people, after previously removing our enemies, 
planted us in this infant colony, in the year 1760, and after con- 
tinuing five years destitute of a minister of the gospel, by applica- 
tion to the South Association in Hartford, in the colony of 
Connecticut, we obtained one Eev. Benaiah Phelps, who came to 
us ordained to the work of the ministry and well recommended by 
said Association, who after one year's continuance with us on 
probation took the pastoral charge of us to our general satisfaction. 
Our numbers consist of a hundred and thirty-three families (not 
ten of which are of the established church), and between eight and 
nine hundred souls". The members of the committee who made 
the appeal were. Captain Samuel Beckwith, Deacon Caleb Hunt- 
ington, and Messrs. Isaac Bigelow, John Newcomb, Hezekiah Cogs- 
well, and Elkanah Morton, Jr. These men seem personally to have 
been some three hundred dollars out of pocket in their management 
of the Church's affairs, and according to the letter already referred 
to of Mr. Handley Chipman to Messrs. Cock and Smith, to have 



THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 275 

taken this means to reimburse themselves. The appeal was received 
by Dr. Eliot in the kindest way. At onee, it is stated, he raised a 
hundred pounds for the church, but just then happening to see in 
Boston a Halifax Congregationalist, Mr. Malachy Salter, he asked 
him if there were not other congregations in the province as needy 
as that at Cornwallis. Mr. Salter assured him that there were, and 
particularly the congregation at Chester, where the Rev. John 
Secombe, a graduate of Harvard of the class of 1728, was stationed. 
Accordingly, Dr. Eliot sent his contribution to the Hon. Benjamin 
Gerrish, another Boston man living in Halifax, who distributed it 
as he judged wisest amongst the various Nova Scotia Congregation- 
alist churches. 

In the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for 
1888 this appeal has been printed, and in connection with it a long 
letter from Messrs. Gerrish and Salter to the Rev'ds. Andrew Eliot,, 
and Samuel Cooper (of the Brattle Square Church in Boston), 
describing in detail the condition of the several churches of the 
Congregational order throughout the province. There is also> 
printed a letter from the Rev. Nehemiah Porter, of Yarmouth, Nova 
Scotia, to Dr. Eliot, thanking him for his donation of forty dollars,, 
which he says he had received in September, 1769, almost two- 
months before the Cornwallis people's appeal had been sent. Of 
the later donation from Boston it is said that the Cornwallis and 
other churches received ten pounds apiece, the more needy churchi 
at Chester, however, getting double the amount. 

When the appeal of the Cornwallis Committee to Dr. Eliot be- 
came known, Mr. Chipman and others were very indignant, and 
from that time on there seem to have been continual ill feeling and 
frequent dissensions among the members and adherents of the 
church. A little later, however, the church, probably as a body, 
did appeal to a clergjonan in New England to get assistance for 
them in their low financial state. On the minutes of the Council of 
Connecticut, under date of New Haven, October 11, 1771, we find 
the following important record: "Upon the memorial of the Rev. 
Solomon "Williams of Lebanon (Rev. Solomon Williams D. D., 



276 KING'S COUNTY 

minister of the First Church of Lebanon from December, 1722, to 
February, 1776), in behalf of the Congregational Church in the 
town of Cornwallis, in the Province of Nova Scotia, shewing to 
this Board that the inhabitants of said town were settled there in 
the year 1760, and continued five years almost destitute of gospel 
administration; that they have since by the general desire of the 
people settled the Rev. Mr. Benajah Phelps in the gospel ministry 
in that town with the pleasing prospect of a sufficient support, 
since which their circumstances are become very difficult and dis- 
tressing, chiefly by means of the fruits of the earth being cut short 
in 1767 and 1768, and by extraordinary expense in building a meet- 
ing house, and especially in repairing their dykes to the amount of 
near 2000 (£), which has involved them so deeply in debt that 
except they can obta,in relief by the charity of their christian 
brethren and friends in Connecticut, the cause of religion will 
greatly suffer ; praying for a Brief &c as per memorial on file : 

"Resolved by this Board that the said Rev. Solomon Williams, 
in behalf of the church and town of Cornwallis, have liberty to ask 
the charitable contributions of the inhabitants of the several relig- 
ious societies in the towns of New London, Norwich, Windham, 
Lebanon, Colchester, Canterbury and Lyme; and said church and 
inhabitants of said Cornwallis are hereby recommended to their 
christian liberality". 

The meeting house referred to in this minute was built at 
Chipman's Corner in Cornwallis, in 1767 and '68. Until it was 
erected the people must have worshipped in private houses or school- 
houses, or perhaps on important occasions in barns. That the 
Horton Congregationalists did not also move to erect a church 
building on their side of the river, seems strange ; our only explana- 
tion of their failure to do so is that, as we shall see, a Presbyterian 
church was very soon built at Grand Pre, and a Scotch Presby- 
terian minister settled there. The Cornwallis Congregationalist 
church organization, it will be remembered, however, was techni- 
cally known as the Church of Horton and Cornwallis ' '. 

The Cornw9,llis church building was located on land that had 



THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 277 

originally been a corner of the Parade at Chipman's Corner, the 
road across the Middle Dyke here meeting the road called Church 
Street. Very near where the church was placed, in French times 
stood the parish church of St. Joseph, of Eiver Canard, the Con- 
gregationalist churchyard, where many of the most important of 
the early Cornwallis people are buried, being identically the church- 
yard of the French parish church. The site of both church and 
churchyard, it is said, as indeed of the Parade, was first included 
in Major Samuel Starr's grant; very soon, however, this 
gentleman made the land a gift to the town for public use. The 
meeting house was a large, square, two-story wooden structure, 
with high-backed pews, and a lofty pulpit arched by a canopy or 
sounding board. The pews were arranged in four tiers, besides the 
wall pews, and the church must have seated not much less than a 
thousand persons. The frame was brought from New England, 
probably from Machias, Maine, whence the frames of the old gam- 
brel roofed houses on Church Street are said to have been brought. 
The church was used for worship continuously until 1859, when on 
the division of the King's County Presbyterians into three separate 
congregations, services in it were finally discontinued. An act of 
the legislature, passed May 7, 1874, authorized the trustees of the 
South Presbyterian congregation of Cornwallis to sell it, the pro- 
ceeds to be applied to keeping the burying ground in order. 
Shortly after this the building was bought by the Hon. Samuel 
Chipman and taken down. So many of the New England grantees 
had settled farther northward in Cornwallis, toward the Habi- 
tant river, that even for Cornwallis the location of the church was 
never central. "As to building the meeting house", says Mr. Hand- 
ley Chipman, * ' a number of the people was of the mind to have two 
smaller ones built, as the town was very large in extent, of which 
I was one, although where it now stands accommodates me and 
most of mine best, but it was carried otherwise, by reason of which 
many over Canard and Habitant river would never give one 
farthing to the meeting house, and caused some to be backward 
about Mr. Phelps' support and caused uneasiness that has subsisted 
ever since". 



278 KING'S COUNTY 

Mr. Phelps himself lived a little to the eastward of the meeting 
house, but it was in Horton that he got his wife. From the Corn- 
wallis Town Book we learn that "The Rev. Benajah Phelps, son of 
Nathaniel Phelps of Hebron, in the Colony of Connecticut, in New 
England and Mary his wife, was married to Phebe Dennison, 
daughter of Col. Robert Dennison of Horton, and Prudence his wiie, 
November the 19th, 1766, by the Rev. Joseph Bennett". Among 
the births recorded in the Town Book, are to be found the names of 
the Phelps children : Elizabeth, born August 30, 1768 ; Phebe, born 
Oct. 7, 1770; Denison, born Sept. 24, 1772. It is probable that 
one of the first official acts of Mr. Phelps in his new parish was the 
marriage of Margaret Bigelow to Nathan Longfellow, on the tenth 
of October, 1765. Among other marriages he celebrated were those 
of George Smith and Lucy Rude in October, 1765 ; Jonathan Rand 
and Lydia Strong, November 12, 1776 ; Perry Borden and Mary Ells, 
October 22, 1767; Moses Gore and Molly Newcomb, January 26, 
1769; Cyrus Peck and Mary English, October 11, 1770; John 
English and Christina Cogswell, October 31, 1771 ; Mason Cogswell 
and Lydia Huntington, October 31, 1771; Ezra Pride and Lydia 
Bigelow, January 30, 1772; Peter Pineo and Eunice Bentley, May 
14, 1772; Ahira Calkin and Irena Porter, December 24, 1772; Dan 
Pineo and Anna Bentley, October 21, 1773; Oliver Cogswell and 
Abigail Ells, December 23, 1773 ; William Pineo and Phebe Bentley, 
July 18, 1766 ; William Allen Chipman and Ann Osborn, November 
20, 1777. This last date is the latest that we can be sure of his 
having performed any clerical function in the county. 

About the time of Mr. Phelps' retirement from the pastorate 
of the Horton and Cornwallis church, the first religious revival 
movement of Nova Scotia began. In 1740 and '41 New England 
had been stirred by what is historically known as the "Great 
Awakening". This movement had begun almost simultaneously in 
Old and New England, in the former with the "Methodist" move- 
ment in Oxford, with which the names of John and Charles Wesley 
and George Whitefield will always stand inseparably connected, in 
the latter with the preaching of Jonathan Edwards at Northampton, 



THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 279 

Massachusetts, in 1735. The first sermon that Whitefield preached 
in Gloucester Cathedral after his ordination to the deaconate in 
1736 was so vehement that several persons in the great congre- 
gation almost went mad with excitement and fear. Complaints 
were made to the bishop that the young enthusiast was driving 
people crazy, but the bishop only replied that he hoped the madness 
would last until the following Sunday. 

In 1738 Whitefield came first to America, but he soon returned. 
The next year he again came to America for a longer time, and 
wherever he preached, the feeling of his audiences was roused to a 
fervid flame. The other chief names connected with the American 
revival movement were Gilbert Tennent from abroad, and Graham, 
Meacham, Whitman, and Farrand, native born American evangelis- 
tic preachers. At New London, Groton, Lyme, Stonington, Preston, 
and Norwich, as well as in other parts of Connecticut and in various 
places in Rhode Island, people were stirred religiously as they had 
never been before. New England, generally, was moved, but Con- 
necticut more remarkably than any other colony. *'In many places 
people would cry out in time of public worship under a sense of 
their overbearing guilt and misery, and the all-consuming wrath of 
God, due to them for their iniquities ; others would faint and swoon 
under the affecting views which they had of God and Christ. Some 
would weep and sob, and there would sometimes be so much noise 
among the people, in particular places, that it was with difficulty 
that the preacher could be heard. In some few instances it seems 
that the minister has not been able to finish his discourse, there has 
been so much crying out and disturbance". 

The excesses of the revival movement naturally led to great 
opposition to it on the part of the more conservative people in the 
churches. Newly aroused persons often branded their fellow church 
members, and indeed their pastors, as unconverted, and refused to 
have further fellowship with them; the aroused people, in turn, 
were, of course, charged with being fanatical disturbers of the 
churches' peace. The result of the movement on the whole, how- 
ever, was a great increase of vital religion throughout all the 



280 KING'S COUNTY 

colonies. The number of converts made in a few years in New 
England is variously estimated at from twenty-five to fifty thousand, 
and in less than twenty years a hundred and fifty new Congrega- 
tionalist churches were formed. But for a time in many of the older 
churches the greatest bitterness of feeling prevailed, and in the 
course of the revival a considerable number of Separatist churches 
— in Connecticut no less than ten — were formed, in which ''New 
Light" principles, as they early came to be called^ found full 
expression. This religious awakening was chiefly in the Congre- 
gationalist churches, but its effect was greatly felt also in the Baptist 
churches, many of the Separatist churches in a short time going 
completely over to the Baptist faith. 

In 1748, in Newport, Rhode Island, Henry Alline was born. 
His father and mother were natives of Boston, but after their 
marriage, in 1730, they moved to Newport, and probably there came 
under the influence of the great revival. In 1760 they migrated to 
Falmouth, Nova Scotia, and in that town from his twelfth year, 
their son Henry grew up. With a poetical, spiritual nature, and a 
mind keenly sensitive to impressions of every sort, the boy came 
into manhood. Outwardly he was much like other boys, but deep 
within were always seething the elements of fierce spiritual conflict. 
The theology in which he had been reared is pathetically described 
by himself in the ''Life and Journal" he has left, which was pub- 
lished in Boston by Gilbert and Dean in the year 1806. When he was 
twenty-seven years old, "wherever I went or whatever I did, night 
or day", he says, "I was groaning under a load of guilt and dark- 
ness, praying and crying continually for mercy; yea I would often 
be so intent in prayer that when I met anj" one in the street I would 
be praying until I spoke to him, and as soon as I left him would 
begin to cry within myself for mercy. * * * When I waked in 
the morning the first thought would be, 0, my wretched soul, what 
shall I do, where shall I go? And when I laid down would say, 
*I shall perhaps be in hell before morning'. I would many times 
look on the beasts with envy, wishing with all my heart I was in 
their place, that I might have no soul to lose ' '. 



THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 281 

In a short time, however, his conversion came and his ecstasy 
was then as great as his previous agony had been. At that 
instant of time, when I gave up all to Him, to do with me as He 
pleased, and was willing that God should reign in me and rule over 
me at His pleasure, redeeming love broke into my soul with 
repeated scritpures, with such power that my whole soul seemed to be 
melted down with love; the burden of guilt and condemnation was 
gone, darkness was expelled, my heart humbled and filled with grati- 
tude and my will turned of choice after the Infinite God, whom I 
saw I had rebelled against, and been deserting from all my days. 
Attracted by the love and beauty I saw in His divine perfections, 
my whole soul was inexpressibly ravished with the blessed 
Eedeemer; not with what I expected to enjoy after death or in 
heaven, but with what I now enjoyed in my soul: for my whole 
soul seemed filled with the Divine Being. My whole soul, that was a 
few minutes ago groaning under mountains of death, wading 
through storms of sorrow, racked with distressing fear, and crying 
to an unknown God for help, was now filled with immortal love, 
soaring on the wings of faith, freed from the chains of death and 
darkness, and crying out 'My Lord and my God; thou art my rock 
and my fortress, my shield and my high tower, my life, my joy, my 
present and my everlasting portion' ". 

At once the conviction came to him that he must preach salva- 
tion to other.s. "In the midst of all my joys, in less than half an 
hour after my soul was set at liberty, the Lord discovered to me my 
labour in the ministry and call to preach the gospel. I cried out, 
'Amen, Lord, I'll go, I'll go, send me, send me'. And although 
many (to support the preaching of antichrist) will pretend there 
is no such thing as a man's knowing in these days he is called to 
preach any other way than his going to the seats of learning to be 
prepared for the ministry, and then authorized by men ; yet blessed 
be God, there is a knowledge of these things which an unconverted 
man knows nothing of. * * * As for learning, it was true I 
had read and studied more than was common for one in my station, 
but my education was but small: what I had of human literature I 



282 KING'S COUNTY 

had acquired of myself without schooling, excepting what I obtained 
before I was eleven years of age, for I never went to school after I 
came to Nova Scotia". 

Because of his lack of education, for a year he refrained from 
anything more than a local exercise of his gifts for preaching, but 
at last he was led to believe that God wanted him to go forth just 
as he was and show men the way of eternal life. "About the 13th 
or 14th day of April, 1775, I began to see that I had all this time 
been led astray by labouring so much after human learning and 
wisdom, and had held back from the call of God. One day 
in my meditation I had such a discovery of Christ's having 
everything I needed, and that all was mine, that I said 
I needed nothing to qualify me but Christ; and that if I had 
all the wisdom that could ever be obtained by mortals, with- 
out having the spirit of Christ with me I should never have any 
success in preaching; and if Christ went with me I should have all 
in all. And what a willingness I felt in my soul to go in his name 
and strength, depending on him alone. I found I had nothing more to 
inquire into, but whether God had called me; for he knew what 
learning I had, and could have in the course of his providence 
brought me through all the seats of learning that ever man went 
through, together with all the orders of men ; but he had not, there- 
fore I had nothing else to observe but the call of God". 

Accordingly, though his parents were reluctant to have him do 
so, he began to preach in Falmouth, the town where he lived. From 
the first, people were deeply moved by his sermons, and before long 
he went from Falmouth to Newport and preached there. His 
preaching began in April, 1776, and the 3rd of November, having 
been invited to Horton he preached two sermons there. He had 
occasionally been in Horton before, and "it was a strange thing", 
he says, "to see a young man who had often been there frolicking, 
now preaching the Everlasting Gospel. The people seemed to have 
hearing ears, and it left a solemn sense on some youths". A few 
evenings later he spoke again, and there was then "such a throng 
of hearers that the house could not contain them ; and some of them 
were that evening convicted with power". 



THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 283 

As he was on his way back to Fabnouth, he was requested to 
attend a funeral, and at the funeral he met a young man from Corn- 
wallis who begged him to come as soon as possible and preach in 
that town. He promised that if Alline would do so he would find a 
place for him to preach. Alline told him that he was willing to go 
wherever God called him, and that if it seemed his duty he would 
come to Cornwallis as soon as he possibly could. On the 9th of 
November he did set out for Cornwallis, stopping that night "in 
the borders of the town". The next morning he rode to "the further 
part of the town", where the meeting had been appointed, and 
preached two sermons. The day following he went about four miles 
and preached again, and at this service "the Lord began to set the 
word home with power on some of the hearers". Here the "stand- 
ing minister" tried to "dash" him, but the minister and all the 
rest were to him as worms of the dust like himself. His opponent, 
he says, who of course was the Rev. Benaiah Phelps, "had been 
minister of the town, but on account of some division between him 
and his people had been dismissed, and did not seem pleased" at his 
coming into the town. From Cornwallis Alline returned to Horton, 
Vhere he preached two sermons as he passed through. There "God 
was pleased to take hold of the hearts of some of the hearers, and 
never left them until they were brought to the knowledge of the 
Redeemer". January 15th, 1777, he went to Newport, where he 
preached five days ; then he returned to Falmouth and preached and 
visited there until the 3rd of February. After that he went again 
to Cornwallis, and there for four days preached to attentive and 
deeply moved congregations. On his way through Horton, as he 
returned to Falmouth, he held a service, at which the ' ' standing min- 
ister" resident there "got up and opposed". The other people, 
however, paid little attention to the minister and he soon rose and 
left the house. 

This was the beginning of Henry Alline 's work in King's 
County, a work which continued at intervals for five years, set in 
motion streams of earnest religious feeling that have not ceased 
flowing yet, and shaped a theology that to the present time may be 



284 KING'S COUNTY 

said to have been essentially the theology of the deeply religious 
population of the outlying districts, and to a great extent of the 
more closely settled villages and towns. In the course of the next 
five years AUine visited the two townships of Horton and Com- 
wallis some thirty or forty times. He conceived it to be his duty 
never to remain long in one place ; he preached now in Falmouth 
and Newport, now in Horton and Cornwallis, now in Annapolis and 
Granville, now in Liverpool and Chebogue, now in the county of 
Cumberland, now in Prince Edward Island, and now in the New 
England settlements in New Brunswick, on the banks of the pic- 
turesque river St. John. Under the influence of his preaching 
several New Light Churches were formed, the first of these being at 
Cornwallis, where he had what more nearly approached a settled 
pastorate than at any other place. In the first months of his min- 
istry he had a chief part in organizing a church at Newport, the 
articles for which in conjunction with others he was chosen to 
draw up. At Newport *'I preached a sermon", he says, ''and the 
Lord seemed to own us. The reason that we called for no assistance 
from other churches was because we did not think the churches in 
those parts were churches of Christ, but had only a dry form without 
religion. The church was gathered both of Baptists and Gongrega- 
tionalists, also, for we did not think that such small non-essentials as 
different opinions about water Baptism were sufficient to break any 
fellowship, and to obstruct building together among the true citi- 
zens of Zion; and the Lord owned and answered us, and blessed us 
by increasing the gifts, graces, and the numbers of the small, feeble 
band. But the powers of darkness and church of antichrist rose 
against it from every quarter, both in public and private ' '. 

"When AUine first came to Cornwallis the disaffection in the 
church there was no doubt virtually a schism. To the flame of dislike 
of the old church AUine 's fervid preaching added fresh fuel, and at 
last some of the more conservative members of the church in despair 
sent to Colchester County for the two Presbyterian ministers, 
Messrs. Smith and Cock, to come and use their influence to restore 
better feeling. In the meantime, about a year after AUine 's first 



THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 285 

visit, sixty of the disaffected signed a paper entreating the evan- 
gelist to settle permanently among them and form a church. To their 
earnest appeal Alline answered that he believed God had called him 
to an itinerant mission, and consequently he felt that he could not 
accede to their wish. When Messrs. Smith and Cock came, Alline 
was in Cornwallis and went to hear them preach. He had reason to 
hope, he says, that at least one of them was a minister of Christ, 
"although something sunk into a form without the power". The 
advocates of order soon confronted the young evangelist and asked 
him, since he was not ordained what right he had to preach. He 
told them his authority was from heaven, and upon that began a 
discussion with them as to where the power of ordination truly lay. 
He said he upheld order in the Church, but he looked on the power 
of God's Spirit as of far more importance than "the bare tradi- 
tions of men". • The ministers begged him to leave off preaching 
until he could study more, and offered him the use of their libraries, 
but he politely refused their offer and said that God knew before he 
called him how uneducated he was, and that he trusted the Almighty 
would qualify him for any work he still had for him to do. The 
clergymen finally told him they regarded him as a "stiff young 
man", and so went away. A short time after this Alline came to 
Cornwallis again. The interest in religion was still so deep there 
that "a great number met almost every evening and continued till 
eleven and twelve o 'clock at night, praying, exhorting, singing, some 
of them telling what God had done for their souls, and some groan- 
ing under a load of sin. At last, in August, 1777, the newly aroused 
people appointed a committee to wait on the evangelist formally 
and request him to engage to stay with them continuously for some 
time. To this request he answered, that though the divisions of the 
town did not make the prospect of a long stay there agreeable, yet 
considering the people's destitution in religious ministration he 
would stay with them for six months of the ensuing nine. 

On the 15th of July, 1778, the Cornwallis New Light Church, 
over which Alline soon for a while assumed intermittent pastoral 
care, was brought into being. From the minutes of the church. 



286 KING'S COUNTY 

which are still preserved, we learn that at this date ''there met at 
the house of Mr. Simon Fitch a number of brethren to enter into 
church covenant, and accordingly signed a church covenant (viz.)r 
Jonathan Rockwell, William West, Elias Tupper, Benjamin New- 
comb, Stephen West, Peter Wickwire, Elnathan Palmeter". A 
covenant had previously been signed by Joel Parrish, Benjamin 
Kinsman, Abner Hall, Isaac Bigelow, Nathaniel Bliss, and Cyrus 
West, the last two of whom, however, were dead, and with the four 
of these earlier signers who were living, the seven newly covenant- 
ing church members now joined. The 29th of October of the same 
year Alline assisted in organizing a mixed Baptist and Congregation- 
alist Church in Horton, and the following January (Jan. 22, 1779), 
having become convinced that under existing circumstances his use- 
fulness would be increased if he submitted to ordination, he met the 
Cornwallis Church to consult with them about methods for obtaining 
this rite. The Church proposed that they confer with other New 
Light churches concerning the matter, and to this plan Alline will- 
ingly assented. He positively refused, however, to let any of the 
"churches of antichrist" have a voice or hand in the act. On the 
6th of April, after prayer and singing, three lay delegates each 
from the churches he had founded or helped found, at Horton, 
Falmouth, and Newport, laid their hands on his head, and the 
minister was thus ordained. The ordination was held at Falmouth 
in a large barn, and when it was over, with his new credentials 
signed by the nine delegates, Alline went back to Cornwallis and 
resumed his work. There he staid for about a fortnight, but on the 
25th of April he said good-by to his people and sailed down the 
Bay for the River St. John. In July he was back again, and on 
Sunday, the 25th, baptized Lebbeus and John Harris, sons of 
Thaddeus Harris, and for the first time administered the rite of 
Communion to the Church. During this visit he also introduced 
into the church three other members, and as he says, "preached the 
sweet mysteries of the cross and enjoyed many happy hours". 

It seems almost incredible that a man of such delicate organi- 
zation as Henry Alline could have stood as long as he did the 



THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 287 

intense strain of a fervent evangelist's life. Whether the seeds of 
consumption were in him from birth or not we do not know, but 
the poor fellow soon became a victim to this dreadful disease. The 
last visit to Cornwallis his journal records was in September, 1782: 
**I went also to "Windsor and Newport; preached often in both 
places, conversed with the people there, and found some still press- 
ing on for the immortal prize. And after I had been there a while 
I went to Horton and Cornwallis, where I often preached early in 
the morning, and was rejoiced to see how people would crowd to 
meeting so soon and so early in the morning. the sweet hours that 
I have enjoyed, proclaiming my Master's love to the hungry souls. 
I remained in Cornwallis, preaching twice and sometimes three 
times a day, until the last day of September, when I went to Annap- 
olis, where I preached often and saw blessed days". In April^ 
1783, however, he tells of two visits to Horton, but he was now in 
very feeble health and it is possible his beloved Cornwallis people 
had no visit from him at all. In spite of his growing weakness he 
had made up his mind to go to New England, and on the 27th of 
August of this year he sailed from Windsor probably for Boston, 
where his parents had been born. At Jones' River, in the state of 
Maine, he left the vessel and bought a horse, and from there 
travelled by land. Preaching in many places along the way, some- 
time in January, 1784, he reached the house of Rev. David McClure, 
minister of the Congregationalist Church in Northampton, New 
Hampshire. He was now in the last stages of his sickness, and 
almost immediately had to be put to bed. His temperature grew 
high, his feet swelled, he was greatly distressed for breath, and at 
last in the early hours of the morning of February 2nd "he breathed 
out his soul into the arms of Jesus, with whom he longed to be". 
One of the objects of his visit to Boston was to publish a collection 
of hymns he had written for public worship. 

When Mr. AUine first came to Cornwallis, Mr. Phelps had 
ceased to be pastor of the church there, and the congregation was 
therefore left without settled preaching. Accordingly, a majority 
of the persons who controlled the meeting house had given their 



288 KING'S COUNTY 

consent to the evangelist's preaching in it when services had not 
been arranged there for other men. Mr. Handley Chipman, vrho 
was one of Mr. Alline's supporters, says, however, that there were 
some "heady" men that opposed his doing so, and that for the sake 
of peace Mr. Alline's friends preferred to forego their right to the 
meeting house and were content to listen to the preacher in private 
houses or barns. For a good while after its formation the New 
Light Church used a schoolhouse near Hamilton's Corner for its 
services, but it is clear that in the earlier part of Alline's irregular 
ministry the evangelist preached often, if not always, in private 
houses or barns, in various parts of the town. Two of these private 
houses, as we learn from Mr. Handley Chipman 's letter to Messrs. 
Smith and Cock, were those of Samuel Beckwith, Jr., and "Deacon" 
Huntington. In 1786, about two years after Alline's death, a New 
Light Meeting House at "Jaw Bone Corner", was built. Like its 
predecessor at Chipman 's Corner it was a large, square, heavily- 
framed structure, but unlike that it was never finished within, and 
was seated only with benches. The last public service held in it 
is said to have been "on the Sunday that the tide was finally shut 
not from the "Wellington Dyke", this being in the autumn of 1824. 
At a somewhat later date, but when, we do not know, the building 
was removed. In the churchyard about it were buried a good many 
persons who lived in the part of Cornwallis where it stood, most of 
them, no doubt, adherents of Alline's New Light Church. 

"We have dwelt at some length on the life of Henry AUine 
because of the marked influence he exerted on religious thought 
and feeling in the county. The only approach to a settled pastorate 
he had in his short ministerial career, as we have said, was in Corn- 
wallis, and while his influence has been felt, in great part for good, 
all over the province, it is certain that in King 's County some of the 
best fruits of his fervid evangelistic labours have along the years 
been seen. In some places the Alline movement was attended with 
extravagances, and to a certain extent no doubt this was true in 
King's, but here, as indeed almost everywhere else in Nova Scotia, 
the people generally were of so high an order of intelligence that 



THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 289 

the extravagances soon disappeared, the movement leaving in the 
people's characters a deposit of sound, godly principle, that has 
never in the century and a quarter since been lost. 

The complete withdrawal from the regular Congregationalist 
Church in Cornwallis of the people who composed the New Light 
Church left the old church in a depressed and enfeebled state. On 
the 3rd of November, 1778, in response to an urgent appeal from 
the old church, the Rev. Jonathan Scott, pastor of the Congrega- 
tionalist Church at Chebogue, in Yarmouth County, visited the 
town. His visit lasted all winter, and his ministrations did the 
people much good. Soon after he went home the Cornwallis people 
wrote his church in Yarmouth, saying that unless he came back 
they feared matters with them would soon be as bad as they had 
been before. They therefore earnestly begged the Chebogue church 
to allow him soon to return. The letter was signed by Elkanah 
Morton, Seth Burgess, Caleb Huntington, Abraham Webster, and 
John Chipman. Soon followed a third letter, carried by the hands 
of Mr. John Porter, who also took with him two horses to bring Mr. 
Scott and his two elder children back. But Mr. Scott did not come. 
The Chebogue Church not unnaturally felt that the Cornwallis people 
were interfering with them and did not hesitate to express their 
minds on the point. When the Cornwallis men heard this, in a 
truly Christian spirit they wrote: "Dearly beloved, we wish you 
peace. We would not willingly act anything that would be preju- 
dicial to you, either directly or indirectly. And if our perplexed 
circumstances under the present situation of religious matters 
among us hath moved us to proceed too hastily to obtain an answer 
to our request by your Reverend pastor, or have presumed too far 
on your indulgence, we are heartily sorry". This letter was written 
on the 17th of July, 1779, and in addition to the five names signed 
to the former letter bears the signatures of Hezekiah Cogswell, 
John Huston, David Bentley, and John Beckwith, Jr. One name 
which appears on the former letter, that of John Chipman, is here 
left out. In a note in the records of the Chebogue church, Mr. Scott 
himself wrote: *'It is evident they (the Cornwallis people) sur- 



290 KING'S COUNTY 

mounted their sore trial, and acquitted themselves in a manner that 
will ever be an honour to their memory. The Church of Chebogue 
was influenced by their Christian carriage to write a decent letter 
of apology". 

A crisis had now come in the Comwallis church's affairs. The 
Eevolutionary "War was at its height and there was little friendly 
intercourse between Nova Scotia and the revolting colonies. More- 
over, the members of the church had not forgotten the Hartford 
Association's refusal to oblige Mr. Phelps to return to them the 
proceeds of the land he had sold before he left the town. In the 
meantime, a few families of Scotch or Scotch-Irish Presbyterians 
had settled among the New England Puritans on both sides of the 
Cornwallis river, people like the Cummingses, Dickies, and others, 
and in Lower Horton there was a well established Presbyterian 
Church. These combined facts led the Cornwallis Congregation- 
alists to appeal to the Glasgow Associate Synod of the Secession 
Church of Scotland for a minister to supply their religious 
needs. The result of their appeal was that in 1785 the Eev. 
Hugh Graham was sent by the Presbytery of Edinburgh to 
serve the Cornwallis Church. Mr. Graham had been licensed 
by the Edinburgh Presbytery in 1781, and had then received 
a call to South Shields, in the north of England. The Pres- 
bytery, however, thought best that he should go to Nova 
Scotia, and accordingly he sailed from Greenock, on the 
22nd of June, 1785. Two months later he arrived at Hali- 
fax, and from there at once went to Cornwallis. On Sunday, 
August 29th, he preached his first sermon in the Cornwallis 
church. 

The following persons were members of the Cornwallis New 
Light Church before 1799: William Alline, Joseph T. S. Baley; 
Joseph, Rebecca and Sarah Barnaby; Catherine, Elizabeth, Hand- 
ley, and Marvin Beckwith; Asael Bentley; Abigail, Amasa, and 
Isaac Bigelow; Asael and Mary Bill; Thomas Bligh, Nathaniel 
Bliss, Joseph Boyle, James Brown, Alexander Campbell, Mrs. Caton,^ 
Esther Chase ; Ann, Charles, Eunice, Handley, William, and William 



THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 291 

Allen Chipman ; Hannah and old Mr. Clark; Benjamin and Mary 
Cleveland; Preserved Coffil, Eunice Cogswell, Nathaniel Cottle, 
Samuel Crossman, John De Maregnanst ; Asa, Elizabeth, Moses, and 
Sara Dewey; Elizabeth, James, Sabra, and Sarah DeWolf; Rusha 
Dickie, Abigail Dunham; David, Elizabeth, Irene, Timothy, and 
old Mrs. Eaton ; Anna and Mary Elderkin ; John Fielding, Alice Fox^ 
John Godfrey; Elizabeth and Nancy Graham; Mary Hail, Abner 
Hall, Mrs. Harding, Amy Harrington; Eliphalet, Lebbeus, Lucilla,. 
and Thaddeus Harris ; Eobert Hicks ; Benjamin and Robert Kinsman ; 
Mary and Stephen Loomer; Percy Luice; Edward, James, Nancy,, 
and Mrs. Edward Manning ; Mary McDonald, Mary Mclnernay , Mrs. 
Stephens (Anna Miner) ; Mrs. DeWolf (Sarah Miner) ; Benjamin 
Newcomb, Elizabeth Osburn, George Owen; Abigail, Elizabeth, 
Elnathan, Eunice, Juda, and Nathan Palmeter; Joel Parrish, Abner 
Parsons, Erastus Pineo; Mary and Sarah Power; Dorcas Prentice, 
John and Rebecca Rand; Deborah, Greene, and Lydia Randall; 
"William Rear, Reuben Richards, Jonathan Rockwell, Lucretia 
Rogers; Deborah, John, Ruth, Samuel, and Sarah Sanford; Julia 
Anna Sivgard, Daniel Shaw; Anna and Eunice Skinner; Deborah 
Strong; Benoni and Elizabeth Sweet; Elias and Elizabeth Tupper; 
Daniel and Mrs. "Welch ; Asael, Elenor, and Judah Wells ; Cyrus, 
Mary, Paul, Seth, and Stephen West; Mary Whalen, Peter Wick- 
wire ; Keturah Whipples, Bill Williams, Shalometh Woodworth. Of 
these early members of the church founded by Alline, sixty, it is 
said, had received infant baptism, seventy-six had been immersed 
as adults. In 1799, seventeen of these persons were dead. 

Concerning the literary gift of Rev. Henry Alline a few words 
ought to be added here. Besides his Journal, which records as we 
have seen, with great minuteness, his inner experience and much of 
his evangelistic work, there was published at Stonington, Connec- 
ticut, in 1802, a collection, for public worship, of ninety-nine 
"Hymns and Spiritual Songs" written by him. These hymns, 
though quite equal in devotional feeling to those of the Wesleys and 
Watts, as might be expected are generally on a lower plane of 
literary excellence. Many of them, however, show a delicate lyrical 



292 KING'S COUNTY 

sense, and to one a rather high place has justly been given. It is 
the following : 

Amazing sight, the Saviour stands 

And knocks at every door, 
Ten thousand blessings in His hands 

For to supply the poor. 

Behold, saith He, I bleed and die 

To bring poor souls to rest ; 
Hear, sinners, while I'm passing by. 

And be forever blest. 

"Will you despise such bleeding love 

And choose the way to hell ; 
Or in the glorious realms above 

With me forever dwell? 

Not to condemn your sinking race 

Have I in judgment come, 
But to display unbounded grace 

And bring lost sinners home. 

May I not save your wretched soul 

From sin, from death, and hell. 
Wounded or sick, I'll make you whole 

And you with me shall dwell. 

Say, will you hear my gracious voice 

And have your sins forgiven, 
Or will you make a wretched choice 

And bar yourselves from Heaven? 

Will you go down to endless night 

And have eternal pain. 
Or dwell in everlasting light, 

Where I in glory reign? 



THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 293 

Come, answer now before I go, 

While I am passing by, 
Say, will you marry me, or no, 

Say, will you live or die ? 



CHAPTER XYII 
EARLY PRESBYTERIANISM 

With the coming to Cornwallis of the Rev. Hugh Graham in 
1785 the history of the Cornwallis Congregationalist Church as a 
Presbyterian church may be said virtually to begin. Long before 
that time, however, a Presbyterian church had been established at 
Grand Pre, in Horton, and the early history of that church is 
synonymous with the beginning of Presbyterianism in the county. 
Before 1765 the only Presbyterian ministers who had laboured in 
Nova Scotia were the Rev Samuel Kinloch and the Rev. James 
Lyon, the former of whom had previously preached in Pennsyl- 
vania, the latter in New Jersey. These clergymen had made the 
Scotch-Irish settlers of Colchester their chief charge, but in 1766 
the County of King's also was added to the field of Presbyterian 
missionary work. 

In 1765 the spiritual needs of Nova Scotia aroused the atten- 
tion of some young men studying for the ministry in Scotland, and 
three belonging to the General Associate or Anti-Burgher Synod 
volunteered to go to that distant province. Before the time of 
leaving, however, two of them changed their plans, but the third, 
the Rev. James Murdoch of Gillie Gordon, County Donegal, Ireland, 
persevered in his intention, and on the 2nd of September was 
ordained by the Presbytery of Newton Limavady for the ''Province 
of Nova Scotia or any other part of the American continent where 
God in his Providence might call him". With this wide commission, 
in the autumn of 1766 Mr. Murdoch landed at Halifax, where for a 
short time he preached to the Congregationalists. Seeing a chance 
for settled work in Horton, however, the next year he removed 
there, and in a short time gathered a church at what is now Grand 
Pre. After Mr. Phelps' withdrawal from the Cornwallis Congrega- 



EARLY PRESBYTERIANISM 295 

tionalist Church in 1776, it is almost certain that Mr. Murdoch 
sometimes preached in Cornwallis, for it is a matter of record that 
he travelled much farther than that, occasionally preaching at 
Windsor, Parrsborough, Fort Lawrence, Amherst, Cumberland, and 
Economy. In 1795 he removed from Horton to Musquodoboit, and 
in the Musquodoboit river, at Meagher's Grant, on the 21st of 
November, 1799, was unfortunately drowned. His wife was 
Abigail, daughter of Malachy Salter, of Halifax, a Boston merchant 
who had settled in Halifax soon after its founding in 1749. A 
valuable sketch of Mr. Murdoch is to be found in the second volume 
of the Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society. He was 
the grandfather of Beamish Murdoch, Esq., whose documentary 
history of Nova Scotia is one of the most valuable literary posses- 
sions of the Canadian Dominion. To the Presbyterian Church of 
Horton Mr. Murdoch founded belonged members of the families of 
Avery, Calkin, Curry, Davison, Denison, DeWolf, Dickson, Frame, 
Fuller, Godfrey, Martin, Peck, Reid, "Whitney, and Woodworth, 
most of these, of course, like the Cornwallis people who became 
Presbyterians at a later date, originally New England Congrega- 
tionalists. 

The first meeting house built by the Horton Presbyterians was 
situated at Grand Pre, almost on the site of the present Methodist 
church, in the rear of which the graves of a good many of the 
earliest settlers of Horton lie. It must have been erected very soon 
after Mr. Murdoch took up his residence in the county, but the 
exact date of its building we do not know. A few years after Mr. 
Murdoch left Horton it was taken down, and in 1804 a new one, 
which still stands but has long been disused, was begun. This, 
second one was not, however, finished until 1818. The distance 
between it and the meeting house of Mr. Moulton's mixed Church 
at what is now Wolfville, was about five miles. Of the few archi- 
tectural relics in the county, this Horton Presbyterian meeting 
house is perhaps historically the most interesting. In it remain still 
the original high-backed pews, and the old sounding board that so 
many years echoed the voices of the first Scottish ministers in the 
county. 



296 KING'S COUNTY 

Mr. Murdoch's pastorate in Horton was not by any means con- 
tinually a pleasant one, and he seems to have retired from it some 
four years before he finally left the county. He did not remove 
from Horton before 1795, and it is said that his successor, the Rev. 
George Gilmore, became pastor of the Church in 1791. Mr. Gilmore 
was born in Antrim, Ireland, in 1720, studied in Edinburgh, married 
and had children born in Ireland, and came to Philadelphia in 1769. 
From Philadelphia he removed to New England, where he staid 
until the beginning of the Revolutionary "War. Then, hated as a 
Tory, he fled on the ice, across the St. Lawrence river, to Canada. 
From Canada he found his way to Nova Scotia, and in 1785 was in 
Halifax making claims for losses he had met with in the war. On 
Ardoise Hill, near "Windsor, the government gave him a farm, and 
there for one winter he and his family ** lived on potatoes and 
milk ' '. At this time he was so poor that it is said he once walked to 
Halifax to try to mortgage his farm for a barrel of flour. His dis- 
tresses ought not to have been so great, for on coming to Hants 
county he assumed charge of the Presbyterian church that Mr. Mur- 
doch had gathered at "Windsor and Newport, and at these places 
preached more or less regularly until 1791. In that year he removed 
to Horton, and there he laboured till his death in 1811. He sleeps 
in the burying ground near the church where for so long he 
preached, and a slab with a Latin inscription marks his now almost 
forgotten grave. In the care of the "Windsor Church, when he left 
it, he was succeeded by the Rev. James Munro, but in Horton he 
seems to have had no immediate successor. 

The ministry of Rev. Hugh Graham at Cornwallis began, as we 
have seen, in 1785. Before his departure from Scotland the Asso- 
ciate Synod issued an injunction that as no Presbytery yet existed 
in Nova Scotia, as soon as he should be settled there one should 
be formed. Accordingly, in August, 1786, the two Colchester county 
clergymen, Messrs. Smith and Cock, together with Mr, Graham, 
constituted themselves a Presbytery, the name given to the new 
organization being the "Associate Presbytery, of Truro", and the 
standards adopted by it being precisely those of the Presbyterian 



EARLY PRESBYTERIANISM 297 

churches of the same faith in Scotland. At a meeting some little 
time after the date of organization, the clergymen who composed 
the sjmod declared themselves ''subordinate to the Burgher Asso- 
ciate Synod in North Britain". Into this Presbytery, since he 
belonged to another section of Presbyterianism in Britain, Mr. 
Murdoch of the Horton church did not come. As may readily be 
imagined, the New England Congregationalists, who for the most 
part composed the Cornwallis church, did not easily relinquish 
their independent ways. In a pamphlet, written at a later period 
by the Eev. William Sommerville, the writer disapprovingly says 
that the church "up till late days refused to know any distinction 
among Presbyterians; to testify their disapprobation of division 
stood divided from every Presbyterian body in the empire; and 
conducted their affairs more upon Congregational than Presbyterian 
principles". From the people's origin and early training this 
attitude on their part is precisely what we should expect. They 
were Presbyterians, not from natural inclination or inherited 
tendency, but from force of outward circumstances, and their 
positive refusal for a long time to give up the use of their familiar 
New England Watts' hymn book was a natural mark of their 
attitude towards the new ecclesiastical relations in which they 
found themselves. 

As a Presbyterian clergyman, Mr. Graham with all his might 
urged the substitution for this hymn book of the Presbyterian 
version of the scripture Psalms, but the people were unflinching, 
and at last, partly it is said because of their persistence in the use 
of Watts' hymns, in 1799 Mr. Graham resigned his charge. In 
spite of the annoyance he sometimes suffered from the people's 
un-Presbyterian ways, and his continual irritation at being obliged 
to use "uninspired hymns", his ministry was on the whole a suc- 
cessful and happy one. At last, however, when Mr. Murdoch was 
drowned, a call came to him from the united congregations of 
Stewiacke and Musquodoboit, and perhaps not unwillingly he 
accepted that charge. Of marriages performed by him in Corn- 
wallis the Town Book contains the records of not a few. Among 



298 KING'S COUNTY 

the people he married were: Experience Ells to Prince Coffin, 
January 8, 1798; Sarah Chase to Andrew Newcomb, December 22, 
1791; and Rebecca Dickie to George Cummings, January 22, 1795. 
He himself married, December 15, 1791, Elizabeth, daughter of John 
and Elizabeth Whidden, his friend the Rev. Daniel Cock performing 
the ceremony. To Mr. Graham and his wife at least three children 
were born : Hugh, November 21, 1792 ; John "Whidden, February 22, 
1795; Elizabeth, June 18, 1798. Rev. Hugh Graham died in April, 
1829, in his seventy-fifth year, his work in Nova Scotia having 
extended over the long period of forty-four years. In the pastorate 
of the Cornwallis Church Mr. Graham was succeeded by the Rev. 
[William Forsyth. 

This clergyman was a licentiate of the Established Church of 
Scotland, had been ordained by a college of lay elders in the United 
States, and was minister of the Cornwallis Church from 1799 till 
his death in 1840. The first marriage recorded as having been cele- 
brated by him is that of Peter Bentley Pineo and Olive Comstock, 
September 2, 1802. He was himself married to Mary Beckwith, 
daughter of Asa and Mary (Morton) Beckwith, born February 6, 
1781, by whom he had seven children : Mary, who became the first 
wife of Rev. George Struthers; William, who became a physician 
and died unmarried; Jean, who became the second wife of Mr. 
Thomas Lydiard ; John, who became a physician and married Miss 
Martha Ann Morton, daughter of Hon. John Morton; Margaret, 
who was still living, unmarried, in 1885 ; Bezaleel, who married first 
Miss Tupper, second Miss Oakes; and Elizabeth, who died unmar- 
ried. In the agreement made with Mr. Forsyth it was expressly 
stated that the people were still to be allowed to use Watts' hymns, 
and this through his whole pastorate they continued to do. Mr. 
Forsyth was not only the minister of the church, but the teacher of 
many of the sons of leading Cornwallis men. His grammar schoolj 
indeed, was the most important school in the western part of the 
province. He had a good deal of dry humour, and it is related of 
him among other things that once in an interview with a farmer 
whose son he had found unusually dull, he said : ' ' Your boy cannot 



EARLY PRESBYTERIANISM 299 

learn, it is no use for him to try" ! "Manure (inure) him to it", said 
the father, "Manure him to it"! "Alack, alas, man"! said the 
Scotch parson, "if I were to put all the manure in your barnyard 
on him he could not learn". Among those who received their early 
education from "Parson Forsyth" were the three sons of Dr. Isaac 
Webster — Dr. William, Dr. Frederick, and Henry Bentley Webster ; 
John and William Robertson, of Annapolis County; Dr. Samuel 
Bayard H. N. Chipman, J. Hosterman DeWolf, Peter Delancey, 
Edward Beckwith, George E. Morton, and other afterwards well 
known men. Mr. Forsyth's active ministry ended some four or 
five years before his death, though nominally he still continued 
pastor of the church. In 1827, the Rev. George Struthers, also of 
the Established Church of Scotland, who afterwards (the Rev. John 
Martin of Halifax officiating), January 28, 1830, married Mr. 

Forsyth's eldest daughter, Mary, and the Rev. Morrison were 

sent from Scotland by the Lay Association as missionaries to Nova 
Scotia. At once Mr. Struthers came to Horton, Mr. Morrison going 
to Dartmouth, which place he afterwards left for Bermuda. Mr. 
Forsyth needing assistance, Mr. Struthers preached for some time, 
once a month, at Cornwallis. Very soon after his marriage, how- 
ever, he went to Demerara, but in August, 1835, on an invitation 
from the Cornwallis church, sent him through Dr. Isaac Webster, 
he returned to Cornwallis, where for five years he ministered to the 
congregation as subordinate pastor. In 1840 Mr. Forsyth died and 
Mr. Struthers became sole pastor of the church. 

While Mr. Struthers was at Demerara the Rev. William Som- 
merville, M. A., a Scotch-Irish Covenanter of the strongest person- 
ality, who had been ordaind, May 31, 1831, by the Reformed Church 
of Ireland, and for a time had ministered in Amherst, Nova Scotia, 
came to the Horton Church. To assist Mr. Forsyth, he, too, gave a 
quarter of his time to Cornwallis. His pastorate in Horton began 
April 1, 1833, and continued for about seven years. When 
Mr. Struthers returned from Demerara he at once withdrew from 
Cornwallis, but during his brief ministry there he was able to bring 
about the long desired substitution of the Scripture Psalms and 



300 KING'S COUNTY 

Paraphrases for "Watts' Hymns. He first came to Comwallis on 
his wedding tour, and the people, it is said, enjoyed his sermons so 
much that as soon as he assumed the Horton pastorate they engaged 
him to assist Mr. Forsyth. In his initial sermon after his engage- 
ment with them, he spoke strongly against the use of "uninspired 
psalmody", and this oft-repeated invective sounded a little unpleas- 
antly to their ears. His influence over them soon became so strong, 
however, that they yielded their prejudice in favour of their beloved 
"Watts, and at last adopted the Presbyterian version of the Old 
Testament Psalms. 

Mr. Struthers' ministry at Comwallis lasted until 1857, a 
period of between twenty-one and twenty-two years; his death 
occurred March 17, 1857. His second wife, the mother of his chil- 
dren, was Eliza Ann Davidson, who was married to him by the Rev. 
Donald Fraser of Lunenburg. ''Mr. Struthers", says Dr. John 
Burgess Calkin, ''was a preacher of simple, forceful style, and as a 
man was held in the highest regard by all who knew him". He was 
succeeded in the Comwallis pastorate by the Rev. "William Murray, 
born in Colchester county, who entered into his work with great 
energy and zeal. During his ministry new church buildings were 
erected in Kentville, Lakeville, and at Canard, and an unfinished 
church at "Waterville was completed. The oldest extant connected 
records of the Comwallis church begin with May 1, 1843, and dur- 
ing Mr. Murray's ministry were accurately and fully kept. From 
these records we learn that a call was issued to the congregation of 
the old church to meet on Monday, December 27, 1858, at 2 P. M., in 
reference to a proposal to divide the church. This division was 
made in 1859, and by an act of the legislature, dated March 30 of 
that year, a threefold division of the dyke lands owned by the 
church, most of this property being bequests, was authorized. 
Henceforth, the history of the Presbyterian Church in Comwallis 
becomes the history of three separate congregations, the northern 
worshipping at Canard, the southern worshipping at Kentville, and 
the western worshipping at Lakeville. On the division, the Rev. 
Mr. Murray became pastor of the church at Canard, and the Rev. 



EARLY PRESBYTERIANISM 301 

Alexander W. McKay of the church at Lakeville. The 22nd of May, 
1859, the Rev. William Furlong was inducted into the charge of the 
Kentville congregation, and the church building, known as St. 
Paul's, was dedicated. At this dedication service the Rev. Dr. 
Sedgewick of Musquodoboit officiated. In 1868 the Rev. Mr. Fur- 
long resigned, and the successive pastors since have been: Rev. 
John B. Logan, 1868-1885 ; Rev, E. W. Archibald, Ph. D., 1886 ; Rev. 
W. P. Begg, 1887-1896 ; and Rev. G. McMillan, 1897—. In 1909 the 
Presbyterian ministers in the county were. Rev. G. McMillan at 
Kentville, Rev. Mr. MeCurdy at Canard, Rev. Mr. MacKinnon 
at Lakeville, Rev. Mr. Wright at W©lfville, and Rev. Thomas McFall 
at West Cornwallis, The manse, during Mr. Forsyth 's ministry, and 
that of Mr. Struthers' until 1847, was the house in Canard that for 
many years afterward was the parsonage of the Baptist Church. It 
was sold by the Presbyterians in 1847, and a new manse was built 
nearer Kentville for the Rev. Mr. Struthers. 

Rev. William Sommerville left Horton for West Cornwallis prob- 
ably in 1840, and as a " Reformed " or " Covenanting ' ' minister began 
missionary work there and in Wilmot. In 1843 he organized a 
Reformed church in West Cornwallis, his congregation in 1842-3 
erecting a church building, the interior of which, however, was not 
for some time finished. Mr. Sommerville first celebrated the Lord 's 
Supper in the church in November, 1844; of the congregation he 
remained pastor until his death in 1878. In 1882 the Rev. Thomas 
McFall, also a native of Ireland, but educated in the Middle States, 
became pastor, and in this position still remains. At Church Street, 
Cornwallis, services of the Reformed Church are also now regularly 
held. 

Ministers of the Congregationalist-Presbyterian Churchy meet- 
ing at Chipman's Corner: 

Rev. Benaiah Phelps 1765—1776 

Rev. Hugh Graham 1785—1799 

Rev. William Forsyth 1799—1840 

Rev. George Struthers 1840—1857 

Rev. William Murray 1857—1859 



302 KING'S COUNTY 

Ministers of the Horton Presbyterian Church : "" 

Eev. James Murdoch 1766—1791 

Rev. George Gilmore 1791—1811 

Rev. George Struthers 1827—1830 

Rev. William Sommerville 1833—1840 (probably) 

Of some of the customs of early King's County Presbyterianism 
in the first half of the 19th century Dr. John B. Calkin says : "The 
Sunday service was an all-day affair. It included a morning sermon 
and an afternoon sermon, with an intermission of fifteen minutes, so 
that the worshippers could eat the lunch they had brought with 
them in their pockets. In church people were accustomed to stand 
in prayer, with their faces turned from the minister. This peculiar 
custom, the turning of the back to the minister in prayer, was prob- 
ably originally intended as a protest against reverence for the 
minister as a priest. The hymns were lined out before singing, two 
lines at a time, sometimes by a sort of rapid chanting of the words. 
The minister's stipend, like the priest's portion under the Mosaic 
dispensation, was paid in farm produce, a quarter of lamb or veal, 
a roast of beef, a cheese, or whatever happened to be most plentiful 
and in season among the parishioner 's products ' '. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS 

The distinguishing feature of the Baptist faith has always been 
the admission of adults only, after a deep inward experience called 
conversion, into the visible church, this introduction in every case to 
be effected by the rite of immersion. In opposition to the Baptist 
belief is the doctrine, common to all the leading denominations of 
Christians besides Baptists, that in certain cases others besides con- 
sciously "converted" people are proper subjects for the Church of 
God ; and especially the Anglican doctrine, that the Church is rather 
a great graded school for training in Christian life than a voluntary 
association of people of mature religious convictions. Other denom- 
inations of Christians other than Baptists hold that while the 
original Eastern mode of baptism was by complete immersion of the 
body in water, the spirit of the act is sufficiently maintained in the 
application of water to the body in any quantity, or, except that a 
certain formula must be used in the application, in any particular 
way. The great first apostle of Baptist doctrine in New England 
was Roger Williams, whose opinions were so distasteful to Massa- 
chusetts, where he first settled that he was early obliged to flee to 
Ehode Island and establish himself permanently there. Before the 
middle of the 17th century Baptist churches were established at 
Providence and Newport, and in many other places individual men 
were to be found who had carried their Calvinistic faith to its full 
logical limit, and their views of baptism to the most exclusive point. 
In Massachusetts the first Baptist church was established at 
Rehoboth in 1663, this being followed by one at Charlestown in 
1665. At the time of the ''Great Awakening" there were in the 
New England Colonies, in all, about twenty Baptist churches, but 



304 KING'S COUNTY 

this widespread revival, emphasizing as it did the prime importance 
to church membership of conscious conversion, gave a great impetus 
to the Baptist faith. 

The New England people who came to Nova Scotia in 1760 were 
chiefly from Congregationalist churches of the conservative type, but 
among them were no doubt some who had been strongly influenced by 
the New England New Light revival, and there was probably here 
and there one who had gone beyond the others, and in sympathy, at 
least, had given his complete allegiance to Baptist belief. The 
most notable example of this was the Rev. Ebenezer Moulton, who 
had been ordained pastor of the Baptist Church at South Brimfield, 
Massachusetts, in 1741, but who in 1761, came to Nova Scotia. 
With other immigrants he landed at Chebogue, in Yarmouth 
County, and there received from the government seven hundred 
and fifty-five acres of land. Soon after his arrival he and two 
others were appointed land surveyors in the western part of the 
province, Moulton also being made a magistrate. For some years 
Moulton probably preached wherever he could find hearers, two 
of the places being Horton and Cornwallis, at both of which places 
we find him in 1763. Under his preaching in these townships a good 
deal of religious feeling is said to have been aroused, and as a 
result he baptized in Horton a number of men and women, whom 
he at once organized into a church. It is agreed by all historians 
that this church was not exclusively Baptist, that its membership 
included some who more properly still belonged among '*Pedo- 
Baptist" Congregationalists, and it is a matter of common knowl- 
edge that because of lack of harmony among its members, and 
perhaps from general indifference, its existence gradually, before 
many years, came to an end. [It is not clear how long Mr. Moulton 
stayed in Horton. The Rev. Dr. Saunders in his history of the Bap- 
tists says that there is some ground for believing that while he was in 
the province he received an appointment a chaplain on board an 
English man of war. He finally returned to Brimfield, however, 
and there in 1783 died.] 

Under Henry AUine's preaching the Horton people were again 



THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS 305 

aroused spiritually, and as we have already seen, in 1778 the evan- 
gelist was called upon to assist in forming a new church there. In 
his Journal he says: "Being requested, I attended now a meeting 
of some of the Baptists in Ilorton, to advise about gathering a 
church there. may the time come when Ephraim shall no more 
vex Judah nor Judah envy Ephraim, and that there might never 
more be any disputes about such non-essentials as water baptism, 
the sprinkling of infants, or baptizing of adults by immersion, but 
every one enjoy liberty of conscience. They gathered in church 
order, and made choice of one N. Person (who was not endowed 
with a great gift in the word) for their elder, intending to put him 
forward until God gave them some better one, or brought him out 
more in the liberty of the gospel; after which he was ordained". 
The minister here called "Person", of whom the Horton Church 
had made choice as their ' ' elder ' ', was Nicholas Pierson, an English 
shoemaker living at Horton, of whose origin, or the time of whose 
migration to Nova Scotia, we are entirely ignorant. The church 
he helped organize began its existence October 29, 1778, and his 
own ordination took place the 5th of the following month. His 
first fellow members in the Church were : Benjamin Sanford, John 
Clark, Peter Bishop, Silas Beals, Benjamin Kinsman, Jr., Daniel 
Huntley, John Coldwell, Esther Pierson, and Hannah Kinsman, in 
all ten persons. At the organization of the church Benjamin 
Kinsman laid his hands on Mr. Pierson 's head and charged him 
to be a faithful pastor, and Mr. Pierson laid his hands on Mr. 
Kinsman's head and created him a deacon. To Pierson 's formal 
ordination the New Light churches of Falmouth and Newport sent 
delegates, and at the service Henry Alline himself preached the 
sermon. The 6th of April, 1779, when Alline was ordained, Pierson, 
it is said, in return preached the sermon for him. Of the Horton 
church, Benjamin Kinsman was at once made clerk as well as 
deacon. In the succeeding year ten other persons were baptized 
by Pierson and added to the membership. These were Peter Wick- 
wire, Jerusha Harrison, Frederic Babcock, Susannah Palmeter, 
Mary Loomer, Thomas Handley Chipman, Deborah Newcomb, Han- 



306 KING'S COUNTY 

nah Loveless, Huldah Woodworth, and Joseph Morton. Of these 
new members, Thomas Handley Chipman afterward became one of 
the ''Fathers" of the Baptist denomination in the Maritime Pro- 
vinces, and the Church generally had a strong pioneer Baptist 
influence in Nova Scotia at large. 

For a short time after the founding of the Horton Church the 
subject of close communion was evidently warmly disputed, and for 
a year or two the more exclusive Baptist practice prevailed. For 
this reason, or because of some other supposed divergence of the 
Horton Church from New Light standards, on the 22nd of July, 
1780, the Cornwallis Church voted "that the Baptist Church of 
Horton, of which Rev. Nicholas Pierson is pastor, have no right 
to sit in any council with this Church, neither have this Church or 
any member of it a right to sit with them". That the Horton 
Church, however, had not become fully confirmed in Baptist ex- 
clusive beliefs is shown by the fact that in the autumn of 1780, at 
a "Conference" in Wilmot the Church voted "that the Congrega- 
tional brethren who are sound in the faith be invited to sit down 
with us at the Lord's table occasionally, and that the mode of 
baptism is no bar to communion". This vote, however, by common 
practice, at least, if not formally, was later rescinded, for during 
the pastorate of the Rev. Theodore Seth Harding, the Church like 
all the other Baptist churches in the province, became a strictly 
close communion church. In 1780, Peter Bishop was appointed a 
deacon of the Church, and in 1779- '80 thirty persons were baptized 
into its membership. In 1784 the church had eighty members. 

From 1791, when Mr. Pierson left Horton for Hopewell, New 
Brunswick, until 1796, the Horton Church was without a settled 
pastor, but had more or less regular "supplies", one of these, the 
Rev. Joseph Read, of Sackville, New Brunswick, who at some time 
unknown to us died suddenly at Wolfville, from "the lodging of 
an apple core in his throat". In June, 1795, Rev. Theodore Seth 
Harding was engaged to preach for six months, and with this event 
begins the settled history of the church. The Rev. Mr. Harding 
was a native of Barrington, Queen's County, and was born March 



THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS 307 

14, 1773. His parents, Theodore Harding, Sr., and Martha (Sears) 
Harding, came to Nova Scotia with other Cape Cod families, from 
Eastham, Massachusetts, in 1761, in the same migration, also, being 
the founders of the later well known Queen's county families of 
Collins, Crowell, Doane, Freeman, Nickerson, and Snow, Theodore 
Harding, Sr., was born at Eastham, June 11, 1730, and May 13, 1756, 
married Martha, daughter of Josiah and Azubah (Knowles) Sears, 
His children, born in Barrington, Nova Scotia, were Azubah and 
Jerusha, twins, born January 1, 1763 ; Joshua, born March 15, 1768 ; 
Bethiah, born May 15, 1767; Mercy, born November 24, 1769; 
Theodore, born March 14, 1772. The father of Theodore, Sr., was 
also Theodore, and a brother was Captain Seth Harding, born April 
17, 1734, whom the Harding Genealogy calls "a distinguished naval 
commander". 

Rev, Theodore Seth Harding was only eight years old when he 
came under the influence of Henry Alline's preaching, and that 
moment the boy's deeper spiritual life began. In 1785, Rev. Free- 
born Garretson, a Methodist minister of the Baltimore (Maryland) 
Conference, came to the province and engaged in evangelistic work, 
and under his preaching Mr. Harding's religious life was still fur- 
ther quickened. Finally, through the influence of his namesake, Rev, 
Harris Harding of Horton, he was effectually converted, and in 
1793 began to preach. His mother was *'a pious Presbyterian", 
but he had come under the influence of the Methodists and in 1794, 
Rev. William Black gave him a lay preacher's mission to Windsor, 
Horton and Cornwallis. For nine months he preached in these 
places, and whenever he preached, Methodists, Baptists, and New 
Lights flocked to his sermons. At last his early Presbyterian train- 
ing showed itself so strongly in his preaching that the Methodists 
called him to account. The examination was kindly conducted, but 
it resulted in his leaving the Methodist denomination. Before long 
a decided change came in his views of baptism, and on the 31st of 
May, 1795, he was immersed by the Rev. John Burton, at Halifax: 
The 26th of the following June, he was engaged, as we have seen, to 
preach for six months to the Horton Church. When the six months 



308 KING'S COUNTY 

was ended he received a call to the pastorate, and on the 13th of 
February, 1796, began his settled work. The following July (July 
13) he was ordained at Horton by Rev. John Burton, and from that 
time till his death, the 8th of June, 1855, he was the faithful and 
honoured pastor and friend of many of the most influential of the 
Horton people. His immediate successor at Wolfville was the late 
E-ev. Dr. Stephen "William DeBlois, who also laboured faithfully with 
the church till his death. "Father" Harding's long ministry at 
Horton, a pastorate lasting for the extraordinary period of more 
than fifty-nine years, was one of unstinted devotion to duty, and of 
singular fruitfulness in spiritual results. When the first church 
huilding of the Horton Baptists was erected it is impossible to say ; 
it must have been, however, some time early in the Rev. Ebenezer 
Moulton's pastorate. The building stood in the old burying ground, 
beside the main street of the village, very near where Rev. Theodore 
Seth Harding is buried. For a long time it was used not only for 
preaching on Sundays, but for secular meetings in the week as well. 
We have seen how from the disturbances which early arose in 
the Congregationalist Church of Cornwallis and Horton, finally 
resulted a New Light Congregationalist church, with its meeting 
place at "Jaw Bone Corner", we have now to see the latter church 
torn by dissension, and at last dividing, as the church of the ' ' Stand- 
ing Order" earlier had done. That the Cornwallis New Light con- 
verts were often full of religious fervour, we have ample testimony 
in AUine's Journal, but we find also in that Journal evidence that at 
a very early stage of its history the fiercest doctrinal disputes began 
in the church. In December, 1779, Alline writes of his Cornwallis 
converts : "The Christians were sometimes blest with liberty in their 
souls; but the work of conviction had been declining ever since 
the dispute began about water baptism. that Christians would 
think what they are about, when warmly contending about such 
non-essential matters; and that they are not only laying stumbling 
blocks before the blind world, but neglect also the vitals of religion, 
and the salvation of poor unconverted souls". Shortly after this 
the evangelist visited Cornwallis again and found that many of 



THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS 309 

the awakened ones had ''gone back to sin and vanity", that the 
work of conviction was declining, and that people were indulging 
in "unprofitable disputes about water baptism". In July, 1780, 
he complains once more of the same thing, and says : " how much 
advantage does the enemy get in the minds of Christians by those 
zealous disputes about non-essentials, making that the chief subject 
of their discourses, when the essentials or work of God is neglected. 
I have often observed in the short compass of my ministry that 
when the Christians get much of the life of religion with the love 
of God in their souls, those small matters were scarcely talked of, 
but whenever they met their discourse was about the work of God 
in the heart, and what God had done for their souls, exhorting sin- 
ners to come to Christ, and setting forth in their conversation the 
important truths of the gospel, but as soon as religion grows cold 
then they sit hours and hours discoursing about those things which 
would never be of service to body or soul, and proving the validity 
of their own method, or form of some external matters, and con- 
demn others who do not think as they do. Ah, how many hours I 
have spent even among Christians to prove the different methods 
of water baptism either to infants or adults, either by sprinkling 
or immersion; when it would not at all help the poor soul in the 
least out of its fallen state back to God without the true baptism 
of the spirit of Christ, which alone can". Six months later he 
writes: "About the 25th of December I went to Cornwallis and 
remained there until the 1st of January. I preached often there 
among the people and found many of the Christians very lively in 
religion but there remained still some disputes between the Baptists 
and Congregationalists about water baptism. Many hours were 
very unprofitably spent by some of the Christians contending about 
it. the infinite goodness of God to bear the infirmities of his 
children. How much tradition, superstition, and idolatry do we 
bear about us, yet he loves us". 

The first settled pastor of the Cornwallis New Light Church 
after the death of Mr. Alline, was the Rev. John Payzant. The 
Payzant family, like the Allines, lived in Falmouth, and there John 



310 KING'S COUNTY 

Payzant had married a sister of Henry AUine. Payzant's ancestors 
had been staunch Huguenots, but for a time he himself had studied 
at Quebec for the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. After 
the family migrated to Nova Scotia, his father had been killed by 
Indians at Lunenburg; his mother with her children had then 
settled in Falmouth, where the government had given her a grant 
of land. Under Alline's preaching at Falmouth, John Payzant was 
converted, and in a short time, like Alline, he consecrated himself 
to evangelistic work. In April, 1782, Alline was at Annapolis with 
Payzant and other delegates from New Light churches for the 
ordination of Thomas Handley Chipman, and on the day of 
ordination Alline records: "Brother Pezant preached at 7 in the 
morning". Monday, July 3, 1786, Mr. Payzant was himself or- 
dained over the Cornwallis church, and in the Cornwallis pastorate 
he remained until 1795. At that date he removed to Onslow to take 
charge of the New Light Church there; later, however, he went 
to Liverpool, and until his death in 1834, at a very advanced age, 
was pastor of the Liverpool Old Zion Congregationalist Church. 

During Mr. Payzant's nine years pastorate of the Cornwallis 
church, controversies about baptism were no doubt as frequent as 
they had been before Henry Alline's death. To the pastor himself 
they must have been as distasteful as they had been to his prede- 
cessor, for like Alline Mr. Payzant was never baptized except in 
infancy, and to the end of his days he cared little how or when the 
baptismal rite was performed. To him the baptism of the Holy 
Ghost was the baptism that united God's people and made them one, 
and whether men were baptized by "sprinkling or dipping", he 
thought was of almost no consequence at all. As to restricted 
communion, "the close communion among the Baptists", he said, 
"is an old Jewish tradition, new vamped, as we read from the 
Greek testament, Mark 7:4,' Except they baptize they eat not, and 
other things there are which they have received to hold, as the 
baptizing of cups and pots, brazen vessels and beds' ". 

When Rev. John Payzant left the Cornwallis Church in 1795, 
the Rev. Edward Manning assumed the pastorate. The Manning 



THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS 311 

family had come from Ireland, by way of Philadelphia, to Fal- 
mouth, it is said as Roman Catholics, but the younger members of 
it, at least, had embraced Protestantism, and the sons, Edward and 
James, becoming converted entered the ministry as New Light 
preachers. Edward Manning was first awakened in 1776, by the 
preaching and personal conversation of Henry Alline, whom he 
met at his father's house. Thirteen years later he came under the 
influence of Rev. John Payzant, and then made up his mind 
firmly to "seek the Lord". If he was finally to be lost, he said, 
he would at least "go to hell begging for mercy". Soon he was 
converted, and on Mr. Payzant 's resignation, the 19th of October, 
1795, was ordained over and became pastor of the Cornwallis New 
Light Church. It is not many years since the last echoes in Corn- 
wallis of the strife over baptism in the New Light congregation, 
during Mr. Manning's twelve years' pastorate, died away. Al- 
though there were many in his congregation who in reference to 
baptism remained old time Congregationalists, he himself, like all 
the New Light Ministers in the province except Payzant, soon 
became convinced that it was wrong to baptize infants, or to baptize 
at all except by immersion, and in 1798, at Annapolis, received 
immersion from Thomas Handley Chipman, who, as we have seen, 
himself had been immersed by Rev. Nicholas Pierson nineteen years 
before. After his immersion, Mr. Manning positively refused to 
perform the rite of baptism except according to Baptist rules, but 
his sympathizers in the church were so many that in spite of con- 
tinued controversy and the strong opposition of some, he remained 
the church's pastor until 1807, when he and eight or nine of his 
people withdrew and formed the Cornwallis First Baptist Church. 
In the extant records of the New Light Church are found lists 
of names of members who had and had not been immersed, and 
these lists alone indicate the division of feeling that must have 
existed in the church. In both lists appear the names of repre- 
sentatives of the same families, and tradition tells us that the con- 
troversy over the baptismal rite raged so fiercely that intimate 
friendships were broken and even family relations sometimes se- 



312 KING'S COUNTY 

verely strained. When Mr. Manning decided to form a Baptist 
church he may have expected that a large number of the seventy 
New Light Church members who had been immersed would follow 
him, but this was not the case. The names of those who joined 
with the pastor in forming the new church were only eight, half 
of these being men and half women. The men were, William Chip- 
man, William Cogswell, Holmes Chipman, and Walter Reid. The 
women were, Mrs. Edward Manning, Mrs. Handley Beckwith 
(Catherine Newcomb), Mrs. William Chipman, and Miss Doreas 
Hall. 

Historians of the Baptists in the Maritime Provinces properly 
claim Henry Alline as the father of the Baptist denomination here, 
and indeed the greatest influence of men of power often lies in 
directions quite different from those to which they have intention- 
ally given their energy. Alline, like all mystics, was the apostle 
solely of the inner light. To him forms were of little importance, 
indeed they were often a hindrance to the soul's true approach to 
God. Except worldliness there was nothing among Christians he 
so deplored as discussions about religious forms. When Baptist 
opinions began to take such hold of the minds of his converts in 
Horton and Cornwallis that they felt it necessary to argue for and 
uphold them, to the point of division, the people's sad mistakes, as 
he regarded them, filled his soul with pain. Adult baptism, or 
pedo-baptism, baptism by sprinkling or by immersion, were to him 
matters of utter indifference; the New Testament he had read to. 
find in it only the necessity for the soul's consecration to God. On 
the basis of the revival wave which under his preaching swept over 
the province, the Baptist denomination arose, but its rise is to be 
attributed rather to the impulse he gave the old belief in the 
necessity for conscious conversion, than to any views he held or 
taught concerning ecclesiastical forms. Alline died, as he lived, a 
New Light Congregationalist, and it is not too much to say that from 
first to last his antagonism to Baptist formal exelusiveness went 
very deep and strong. 

Apart from Alline 's, the two most influential personalities in 



THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS 313 

the early Baptist religious history of King's County were undoubt- 
edly those of the Rev. Theodore Seth Harding, and the Rev, Edward 
Manning. Mr. Harding's ministry lasted, as we have seen, for 
almost sixty years, Mr. Manning's lasted for a little less than fifty- 
six years, and both men had a moulding influence on the people at 
large of the respective townships in which they ministered that it 
is not easy to overrate. Rev. Theodore Seth Harding began his 
ministry in Horton, June 26, 1795, and died June 8, 1855. Rev. 
Edward Manning was ordained over the Cornwallis New Light 
Church in 1795, and died January 12, 1851. Mr. Manning's 
physique was powerful, his intellect was commanding, his temper 
was stern ; Mr. Harding was of medium height and size, and though 
strong in his convictions had a far more magnetic and softer mind. 
Mr. Manning towered high above most of the men with whom he 
mingled, his head was large, his forehead wide, his eyes dark and 
piercing, his arms and legs long, and his voice full and deep, and 
he carried always a certain majestic air of command. Mr. Harding 
was a smaller, gentler man, eccentric and fervid in utterance, en- 
dowed with true apostolic fire, a real prophet of righteousness, but 
gifted with poetic sensibility, and with a wide charity, that some- 
times completely triumphed over the severe logic of his creed. Mr. 
Manning was a born ruler, a man made to sway men; Mr. Hard- 
ing 's intellect had perhaps less directness and power but his thought 
had a wide range, his sentences were epigrammatic ; what he failed 
to utter in words, he "conveyed by vivid suggestion", and his 
voice was so melodious that his sermons held spell-bound whoever 
listened to them. "For fulness and melody of voice", says an his- 
torian, "he was without an equal. His speech had a chanting, 
rhythmical flow, and was suffused with pathos and charged to the 
full with irrestible power". Like several early Nova Scotians in 
the political realm, like Uniacke, Howe, and Johnstone, for example, 
these ministers well deserved to be called great, for they had great 
ability, and they left a great influence behind them; but in estima- 
ting their influence, it is impossible not to wish strongly that they 
had had the benefit of wider scholastic training, and larger asso- 
ciation with the educated world. 



314 KING'S COUNTY 

By 1800 all the New Light ministers in Nova Scotia except Rev. 
John Payzant, at Liverpool, had been immersed, and on the 23rd 
and 24th of June of that year a "Baptist Association" was formed. 
In this Association were included two churches in Annapolis County, 
one in Digby, one in Horton, one in Cornwallis, one in Newport, one 
in Sackville, one in Yarmouth, and one in Chester, but the close 
communion platform was not fully adopted by the Association until 
1809. After that year the Congregationalism that the New England 
settlers of 1760 and 1761 had brought into the province almost 
ceased to exist. The Baptist body in Nova Scotia had its birth in 
a general religious Revival, and its growth may largely be traced 
through later similar revivals. Of these revivals King's County 
has had always its share, and out of them have come undoubtedly 
a great deal of deep, continuing religious life. In 1809 the members 
of the Cornwallis Baptist Church numbered sixty-five, in 1810 fifty- 
six, in 1811 sixty-three, in 1812 seventy-three, in 1813 sixty-five, in 
1814 sixty-eight, and in 1820 a hundred and twenty-four. 

Mr. Manning's pastorate of the Church lasted until his death, 
which occurred, as we have said, on the 12th of January, 1851. In 
1847, on account of his failing health, the Rev. Abram Spurr Hunt, 
a young graduate of Acadia College of 1844 (and master of arts of 
1851), was chosen to assist him. When Mr. Manning died Mr. Hunt 
succeeded to the pastorate, and in this office remained until Novem- 
ber, 1867, when he resigned and removed to Dartmouth, the well 
known suburb of Halifax. His successor was the Rev. Samuel Brad- 
ford Kempton, D. D., a native of Queen's County, whose ministry at 
Cornwallis began February 2, 1868, and lasted till 1893. Dr. Kemp- 
ton's immediate successor at Cornwallis was the Rev. Charles H. 
Martell, who held the pastorate from June, 1894, to May, 1901. He 
was followed by the Rev. Daniel E. Hatt, who was pastor from 1901 
to 1905 ; and he by the Rev. Frank H. Beals, who began preaching 
for the church in October, 1905, and became pastor, March 1, 1906. 

When Mr. Manning and his followers withdrew from the New 
Light Church they worshipped for a while in a small, square single 
roomed brick school-house, with a fireplace on one side, and having 



THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS 315 

a wooden roof, which stood on the crest of the hill, west of the 
Walton bridge, at Lower Canard. On the south side of the street, 
opposite, were "the remains of an old French dwelling house and 
blacksmith shop ' ', and near the running dyke, in the rear, were the 
remains of a brick kiln, which had probably furnished the brick 
for the building. This school-house, which is the first one of which 
we have any knowledge in the county, was destroyed by fire in 
1856. By 1809 the Baptist Church had grown sufficiently strong in 
numbers to erect a building of its own, and this its members did, 
choosing for a site the edge of the Parade in Upper Canard. The 
building they now erected closely resembled the first Congrega- 
tionalist meeting house at Chipman's Corner. It had the same 
plain, rectangular form, and for many years the same unpainted, 
weather-stained look. It had two stories, and in each story a long 
row of small-paned windows. On three sides of the interior was a 
wide gallery, with tiers of pews raised above one another, and at 
the church's upper end was a high, square pulpit, hung with red 
damask, into which the minister climbed by steep stairs from the 
floor. Directly under the front of the pulpit, in a little pen facing 
the congregation, sat the venerable deacons, three or four as the 
case might be. In front of them, on ordinary Sundays hanging 
down by the hinges, was the communion table, before which once 
a month the pastor stood to consecrate the bread and wine. In the 
front gallery opposite was the mixed choir, who sang the three 
hymns and sometimes a voluntary, usually led by one of the 
brethren who used a primitive tuning fork. "Can you picture the 
old church and its plan of arrangement"? said a speaker at the 
Centenary celebration of the church, which was held September 1st 
and 2nd, 1907. "It was a rectangular building, nearly even with 
the four points of the compass. A porch on the south side admitted 
by two doors. Entering, you saw the pulpit directly in front of 
you on the north wall. On either side of the central aisle, leading 
from the entrance to the pulpit, was a double tier of pews or high 
backed enclosures. These formed the body of the floor space. An 
aisle ran all round these ranks of pews. Around the entire wall 



316 KING'S COUNTY 

ran one continuous row of pews, interrupted only by the pulpit on 
the north side and the doorway on the south wall. A gallery, 
reached by stairs from the porch, occupied the south, east, and west 
walls above, the choir being seated in the south gallery, fronting the 
pulpit. The pulpit was high and spacious and enclosed the preacher 
securely. The building was not square; its longer sides ran from 
east to west. There was no steeple, no tower, no bell". The meet- 
ing house, as has been stated, was built in 1809. Its dimensions 
were about sixty feet long by forty wide and its timbers were im- 
mense. It stood until 1873, when it was taken down to be replaced 
by a more modern building. This latter was burned in 1909, a 
third church very soon taking its place. 

The offshoots from the First Cornwallis Baptist Church have 
been, — the "Second Cornwallis Church", organized at Berwick in 
1828, with fifty persons ; the ' ' Third Cornwallis Church ' ', organized 
at Billtown, June 6, 1835, with a hundred and sixty-seven persons; 
the * ' Fourth Cornwallis Church ' ', organized at Pereau in 1839 ; and 
the "Fifth Cornwallis Church", organized at Canning in 1870, 
which in 1906 was united with the Canning "Free Baptist Church". 
At the start this Canning Baptist Church had about twenty-seven 
members; when the union was effected the joint membership was 
over two hundred. From the Berwick Church in 1849 or 1850, the 
Long Point, now Burlington, Church was organized, with twenty- 
eight members; from this latter church, June 23, 1874, the "Cam- 
bridge Church" was organized, with about ninety members. "In 
addition to these offshoots, the Berwick Church contributed largely 
towards the original membership of the Aylesford Church". At 
Town Plot, also, as early as 1839, Baptist services were held, from 
these in time coming a Baptist church at Port Williams, the building 
of the meeting house for which was begun in 1866. The first Bap- 
tist parsonage in Cornwallis, which, as we have seen, was originally 
the Presbyterian manse, was an attractive cottage on the Middle 
Dyke road, with an avenue of acacia trees leading to it, known as 
"Salem Cottage". It was here, for much of his ministry that 
the Rev. Abram Spurr Hunt, and for all of his ministry that the 



THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS 317 

Rev. Dr. Samuel Bradford Kempton lived. In 1834 there were in 
the county but three Baptist ministers, the Revds. Edward Manning, 
William Chipman, and Theodore Seth Harding. In Aylesford none 
is given. In 1860, there were : at Wolfville, Revds. John Chase, 
John Mockett Cramp, D. D., Stephen William DeBlois, and Artemas 
Wyman Sawyer, D. D. ; at Pleasant Valley, Rev. William Chipman ; 
at New Minas, Rev. Thomas W. Crawley; at Cornwallis, Rev. 
Abram Spurr Hunt ; at Billtown, Rev. James Parker ; at Gaspereau, 
Rev. E. 0. Reid; at Aylesford, Rev. Abram Stronach. 

After Rev. Edward Manning's withdrawal from the Cornwallis 
New Light Congregationalist Church, that body, it is said, found 
itself composed of "members of the original Chipman 's Corner 
Church who could not be Presbyterians, and New Lights who would 
not be Baptists after the type of the Manning Church, together 
with some newcomers who sympathized with the church in its 
difficulties, and the Chase family, who had been Quakers". It was 
a time for the Church of great depression, but the majority of the 
members who had not joined the secession held steadfastly to their 
allegiance, among them the two deacons, Messrs. Thaddeus Harris 
and Amasa Bigelow, both of whom had laid their hands on Mr. 
Manning's head at his ordination in 1795. The church building at 
Hamilton's Corner remained in possession of the New Light people, 
and very soon after Mr. Manning's withdrawal, but at precisely 
what date we do not know, Mr. John Pineo, who had been one of 
Mr. Manning's bitterest opponents, was ordained and became as 
the church's records quaintly call him ''pasturer" of the flock. 
The Church's preserved records begin only with the year 1819, at 
which time Mr. Pineo was pastor, Messrs. Thaddeus Harris and 
John Sanford were deacons, and Mr. Benjamin Weaver was clerk. 
For a short time the congregation continued to hold services at 
Hamilton's Corner, but a majority of the members living near what 
is now Canning, the meeting house was soon abandoned and services 
were held in private houses "east of the Little Habitant River". 
In 1819 a new meeting house was begun at Habitant, but before it 
was finished it was destroyed by fire. The next year, however, 



318 KING'S COUNTY 

1820, it was rebuilt, but it was at first finished only on the outside, and 
floored. During the last years of Mr. Pineo's pastorate the Church 
suffered greatly for lack of attention. The minister was old and 
infirm, and lived at Scots Bay, and services do not seem to have 
been at all regularly kept up. On the 21st of June, 1835, in his, 
82nd year, Mr. Pineo died, and for four years if the church had a 
minister at all it must have been Rev. William Payzant, son of Rev. 
John Payzant, who before Mr. Pineo's death had come to reside in 
the neighbourhood, and who in the pastor's declining years had 
undoubtedly assisted him in his work. 

In August, 1839, the Rev. Jacob B. Norton, of Argyle, Nova 
Scotia, a Free Baptist minister, was settled over the church, and in 
1841 some other Free Baptist minister who happened to be tem- 
porarily taking his place, indiscreetly and improperly alluded pub- 
licly to the church as a Free Baptist church. This allusion so 
angered the stricter Congregationalists that they soon withdrew to 
the Bass Creek school-house, leaving the majority, who preferred to 
stay with Norton and become Free Baptists, in possession of the 
meeting house and the parsonage. Before long the Congregation- 
alists engaged Mr. George Sterling as their minister, but in 1846 he 
left for Pleasant River and his place was taken by the Rev. Jacob 
"Whitman, who also resigned in 1852. 

From 1855 to '57, Rev. Joseph Peart was pastor of the church ; 
for a year Rev. Samuel Cox supplied its pulpit; from 1861 to '67 
Rev. J. R. Keen was its pastor; and from 1870 to '74 Rev. Jacob 
Whitman ministered to it. For five years after this, students were 
engaged as supplies; from 1879 to '81, Rev, Enoch Barker served 
as pastor; for a year Rev. J. B. Thompson preached in its pulpit; 
for several years Hon. Rev. Burnthorne Musgrave acted as supply,- 
from 1886 to '89 Messrs. Jacob W. Cox, E. C. Wall, and Harry 
Goddard supplied it ; in 1890 and '91 Rev. Churchill Moore was pas- 
tor; and between 1891 and 1900 there were several other brief pas- 
torates, the longest being that of Rev. David Colburn. In 1847 the 
church property at Habitant, which until then had remained in 
the hands of the Free Baptists, was restored to the Congregation- 



THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS 319 

alists by law. In 1849 the meeting house was completed and the 
pews sold, but in 1889 the church disposed of its property, both at 
Hamilton's Corner and at Habitant, and began the erection of a 
meeting house at Kingsport, in the vicinity of which the majority 
of the Congregationalists of Cornwallis still live. 

The minutes of the monthly meetings of the church after 1819, 
which are contained in a dilapidated book, yellow with age, and 
coverless, are characteristic of the time and place in which they 
were made. Some of them are as follows: "May the 22 (1819). 
The Church met and Renewed Covenant Several Come forward and 
told their Experience and was received we have Reason to Bless 
God it was a day of rejoicing". ''May the 29. The Church Met and 
Renewed Covenant several Come forward and told their Experience 
and was received the Lord was with his People". "June 20. The 
Church met and Renewed Covenant. Several come forward and 
told their Experience the Lord was righting up his people". "July 
3. The Church met and Renewed Covenant the Lord was moving 
on the hearts of his people". "Dec. 4. Mary told her Ex- 
perience and was Received the 5 or the Sabeth Day following. 
Partook of the Sacrament". "January 2 (1820). The Church met 
and renewed Covenant. I think there was a quickening of God's 
Spirit upon the minds of the people". "Sept. 4. I beleave the 
Spirit of the Lord was with the people ". " Sept. 25. Their was one 
come forward and told their Experience. I beleave the Lord was 
moving upon the minds of the people". "Oct. the 9. The Church 
met etc. the Lord never will leave nor forsake his people ". * ' Nov. 
7. The Church met etc. We have Reason to Bless God for his good- 
ness their was a revival of his Cause". "August 5, The Church 
met etc. I beleave it was not a lost opportunity". "Feb. 24 (1821). 
The Church met etc. we have reason to bless God for the opertunity 
that we have of meeting together from Day to Day and from time 
to time". "30 March. The Church met and renewed fellowship 
we hope that we shall not forsake Assembling ourselves together. 
I beleave the Lord meets with us and owns and Blesses us and will 
Bless all his people". "July 28. The Church met and renewed 



320 KING'S COUNTY 

fellowship we do not enjoy his love as we have in times past". 
"Sept. 29. The Church met etc. their was some of the Church that 
I beleave could Bless the Day that ever they was Born to Be Born 
again". "Oct. 27. The Church met etc. their is yet hope concern- 
ing Israel the Lord never leaves himself without a witness". " Jan'y. 
25 (1823). The Church met and Eenewed fellowship it was a Dark 
time the Church seems to be scattered". "Nov. 29. it is a dark and 
scattered time amongst God's people" (This reads like a wail from 
one of the Hebrew prophets). "Sept. 25. The Church met etc. 
we feel like those that goes mourning without the sun". "Decem- 
Ijer 25 (1830). The Church met etc. it was like a great freedom with 
& part of the Church". "Oct. 29 (1831). The Church met etc., And 
we beleave many felt the writing of Jesus Christ's Spirit in their 
inmost Soals". 

The following Baptist and Congregationalist ministers have 
been reared in King's County, or have had an immediate King's 
County ancestry : The Revds. Howard Barss, Walter Barss, William 
H. Beckwith, M. A. Bigelow, Ingraham Ebenezer Bill, D. D., John 
Chase, Alfred Chipman, Samuel L. Chipman, Thomas Handley 
Chipman, William Chipman, Bennett Chute, Nathaniel Cleveland, 
Aaron Cogswell, John E. Cogswell, Joshua B. Cogswell, Erastus 
Obadiah Cox, George Davenport Cox, Jacob W. Cox, Frederick 
Crawley, Adoniram Judson Davidson, Austin K. de Blois, D. D., 
M. A. DeWolf, I. J. DeWolf, Henry Eagles, Charles Aubrey Eaton, 
D. D. ; Joshua Tinson Eaton, William Wentworth Eaton, William 
D. Fitch, Harris Harding, C. K. Harrington, D. D. ; David Harris, 
Edward N. Harris, Masters Harris, Austin Kempton, Thomas A. 
Higgins, D. D. ; W. V. Higgins, William Johnson, Burton W. Lock- 
hart, D. D. ; John M. Lowden, D. D., Ezekiel Masters, John Masters, 
John F. Masters, John Chipman Morse, D. D. ; S. J. Neily, Abram 
Newcomb, James Newcomb, William A. Neweomb, James Palmer, 
James Parker, Maynard Parker, Obed Parker, David B. Pineo, John 
Pineo, Silas Tertius Rand, D. D. ; Charles Randall, S. Martin Ran- 
dall, J. Otis Redden, Edward Manning Saunders, D. D ; J. H. 
Saunders, D. D.; Adoniram Judson Stevens, James Stevens, I. J. 



THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS 321 

Skinner, J. R. Skinner, Joseph C. Skinner, George Thomas, Aaron 
Thorpe, Charles Tapper, D. D.; J. H. Tupper; O. C. S. Wallace, 
D. D.; Burpee Welton, Daniel M. Welton, D. D. ; Sidney Welton. 
Among Methodist ministers have been, Charles DeWolfe, D. D., and 
Arthur John Lockhart. 

Of sects other than the larger denominations, King's County- 
has fortunately not had many. About the middle of the 19th cen- 
tury a small congregation of Disciples or "Campbellites" was 
gathered in Cornwallis, chiefly, it is believed, of disaffected Baptists, 
their first meeting house probably being a small square building 
known as the "Tabernacle", a short distance west of the First 
Baptist and present Presbyterian churches in Canard. Their second 
meeting house was on the Upper Dyke road, between Upper Dyke 
Village and the west end of Church Street. The congregation was 
always a small one and the church's place in the ecclesiastical his- 
tory of the county is not important. 



CHAPTER XIX 
EARLY METHODISM 

The Wesleyan Methodist denomination had its first adherents in 
Nova Scotia in a number of Yorkshire families who emigrated to 
Cumberland county in 1770-75, that county then including the coun- 
ties of Westmoreland and Albert, in the province of New Brunswick. 
Of these Yorkshire settlers in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick a 
few families broke away from the main body and made their 
homes in Halifax, Hants, and Annapolis counties, but the majority 
remained in Cumberland. The religion of probably all these York- 
shire settlers was Wesleyan Methodism, and the earnest religious 
faith their lives manifested has had an important influence on the 
character of the people of Nova Scotia to the present time. 

A member of this Yorkshire company was William Black, 
whose father was a Scotchman from Paisley, but whose mother was 
of Yorkshire parentage. William Black himself was born in Hud- 
dersfield, England, in 1760, and with deep emotional experiences 
was converted in Nova Scotia in 1779. As soon as he attained his 
majority, like Henry Alline, he began an evangelistic career, but his 
ordination to the ministry, which occurred in Philadelphia, did not 
take place until 1789. In May, 1782, Mr. Black made his first visit 
to King's County. Starting from Amherst, by way of Partridge 
Island, for Windsor, he came to Parrsborough, but there found that 
the packet for Windsor had gone. An opportunity soon presenting 
itself, however, he crossed to Cornwallis in a privately owned vessel, 
and presented himself to some of the people. One of the most 
prominent men of Cornwallis was Jonathan Sherman, Jr., formerly 
of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, son of Jonathan Sherman, Sr., and his 
wife Mary (Card). Whether Mr. Sherman had already anywhere 
come under the influence of Methodism we do not know, but he was 



EARLY METHODISM 323 

"distinguished by a love of good men, unrestricted by the shackles 
of bigotry", and he seems to have been Mr. Black's first Cornwallis 
host (The Rev. Matthew Richey, D. D., calls him Gideon Sherman, 
but this must be wrong). Less than four years had passed since the 
New Light Congregationalist church of Cornwallis and Horton 
founded by Alline had come into being, and neither over that nor 
the mother Congregationalist church was there any settled pastor. 
Mr. Black's coming, therefore, was undoubtedly welcomed with a 
good deal of pleasure, and on Sunday, May 26th, both morning and 
afternoon, he preached to the New Light people, one of his texts 
being : " I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus 
Christ and Him crucified". At both services, he says, "God was 
graciously present, but it ought to be said with emphasis, 'The 
voice of the Lord was heard in the cool of the day' ". At Cornwallis 
he staid until the 30th of the month, then he rode to Horton and 
preached in the evening there. On this occasion his text was: 
Unto you, therefore, which believe he is precious ' '. 

June 1st he went back to Cornwallis and preached both in the 
school-house and at Mr. Sherman's. Again he returned to Horton 
to Mr. George Johnson's, and from there went to Falmouth, "Wind- 
sor, and Newport, preaching his first sermon at Windsor on the 5th 
of June. Here his service was held in the house of Mrs. Scott, who 
lived on the Francklin farm. "Very precious to the scattered 
Methodists of the Province", writes the Rev. Dr. T. "Watson Smith, 
"must have been the opportunity of receiving the Lord's Supper, 
when persons from Horton and Halifax were ready to meet their 
brethren at Windsor and Newport for the sacred purpose". [At 
this time, however, Mr. Black was not ordained, and that he admin- 
istered the Lord's Supper seems doubtful]. 

Mr. Black's visit to Cornwallis and Horton must have been 
attended with some embarrassment, for in many Cornwallis families 
Henry Alline was looked on as an inspired apostle, while for much 
of his teaching Mr. Black himself, who the year before had come 
into close contact with the Falmouth evangelist, had deep-seated 
distrust. "Mr. Alline 's religious tenets", says Mr. Black's 



324 KING'S COUNTY 

biographer, "were a singular combination of heterogeneous mato- 
rials derived from various and opposite sources. They were 
fragments of different systems, without coherence, and without any 
mutual relation or dependence. With the strong assertion of man's 
freedom as a moral agent, he connected the doctrine of the final 
perseverance of the saints. He allegorized to such excess the plain- 
est narrations and announcements of Scripture that the obvious 
and unsophisticated import of the words of inspiration was often 
entirely lost amidst the reveries of mysticism". Moreover, he did 
not hesitate to speak slightingly of Mr. Wesley, and this in a 
Wesleyan's eyes naturally indicated an unsually perverse and mis- 
guided mind. With this estimate of Henry Alline Mr. Black would 
entirely have agreed, yet he no doubt expressed himself guardedly 
concerning the evangelist, and his preaching generally gave satis- 
faction to Mr. Alline 's King's County friends. 

Before long Mr. Black went to Wilmot and Annapolis Royal, but 
soon returning, again preached at Horton, in a large barn. During 
his visit here Joseph Johnson, he says, found peace, and Matthew 
Ormsby, "formerly a valiant servant of the devil, and confessedly 
proud as Lucifer", was deeply affected. In a later visit to Horton 
the same autumn, October, 1782, he had a long argument with the 
Kev. Aaron Bancroft, a New England Congregationalist, who at this 
time was temporarily in the county, perhaps preaching as occasion 
might offer, concerning the fundamentals of evangelical religion. Mr. 
Bancroft, who was the father of George Bancroft, the historian, and 
who before this time from the year 1780 had been labouring as a 
clergyman in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, was strongly rationalistic, 
and Mr. Black says he was one of them that "prophesy smooth 
things" to unregenerate hearers. In 1784, the Methodist evangelist 
was in Horton again, and during this visit a Mrs. Card, who had 
formerly been "an opposer, but was now on a bed of affliction, and 
in great distress of mind, terribly afflicted with the fear of death", 
was converted and found great mental relief. In 1785 the missionary 
was once more in Horton, preaching at the Baptist and Presbyterian 
meeting houses, and in Cornwallis , preaching at Habitant. August 



EARLY METHODISM 325 

7, 1786, he writes Rev. John Wesley that at Horton the prospect for 
Methodism was good. 

During the winter of 1786-7, under the ministry of the Rev. 
Freeborn Garrettson, who in 1785 had come to Nova Scotia from 
Maryland, a revival of religion took place at Horton. There, 
and at AVindsor and Cornwallis, Garrettson spent the greater 
part of the winter, exchanging appointments occasionally 
with Mr. Black, on whom devolved the care of the Meth- 
odist congregation at Halifax. ''The people of Horton", says 
Mr. Black's biographer, ''had acquired an unenviable distinc- 
tion for wickedness; their attention to public and private worship 
now became equally prominent". During the winter many 
were converted; "I have had a blessed winter among them", wrote 
Garrettson, in March, 1787. "If the work continue much longer as 
it has done, the greater part of the people will be brought in. It 
would cause your heart to rejoice to know what a deadly wound 
Antinomianism has received in the town of Horton. My dear Mas- 
ter has given me one of the first lawyers in Cornwallis, and his 
lady". In 1786, it is recorded, the Methodist missions at Horton, 
Cornwallis, and Windsor, numbered five hundred and ten members ; 
after this revival they probably numbered considerably more. 

Methodist missionary labour in King's County, however, for a 
long time after the revival was unorganized and desultory. At 
Horton, owing to the want of pastoral care , some persons were lost 
to the denomination, but to those who remained faithful the Anglican 
missionary at Cornwallis, the Rev. William Twining, preached once 
in every three weeks in the chapel. ' ' For several years ' ', writes Mr. 
Black, "the Rev. Mr. Twining, a missionary of the Established 
Church, resident at Cornwallis, has once in three weeks preached in 
our chapel at Horton, and frequently administered the Lord's Sup- 
per to our people. About five or six years ago he was first brought 
to experience the converting grace of God; from which time he has 
not shunned to declare the necessity of regeneration, and warmly to 
press on the consciences of his hearers this and the other distin- 
guishing doctrines of the Gospel. He has been frequently present 



326 KING'S COUNTY 

at the meeting of the class, and spoken with great humility and 
thankfulness of the grace of Christ Jesus; and has sometimes met 
the society himself. His attachment to the Methodists, and his plain 
manner of preaching the doctrines of the Gospel, have brought upon 
him much reproach, and considerable trials from some from whom 
he ought to have received much encouragement. Benjamin Belcher, 
Esq., one of his vestry, who had been his principal opponent, and 
had preferred many charges against him to the Bishop, on his 
death-bed sent for Mr. Twining to pray with him, and in his will he 
left about two hundred pounds towards the building him a church". 

Some time before 1793, but precisely when we do not know, the 
Windsor Circuit, which embraced Falmouth, Newport, Windsor, 
Horton, and Cornwallis, was created, and in the year mentioned 
Rev. James Boyd was in charge. The head of the circuit was not 
Windsor, but Horton, and in 1804 Rev. William Black writes the 
Missionary Society that at Horton, "the chief place in the circuit", 
the Methodists have a convenient chapel, which is generally well 
attended. Under the management of Rev. William Bennett and a 
young colleague, Rev. Robert Alder, the Windsor circuit grew in 
importance, and in 1812 the Rev. William Croscombe was sent to it 
by the Conference. In 1819 the Rev. William Burt took his place, 
and to his activity the denomination in the county owes much. 

The precise date of the building of the Horton Methodist chapel 
we do not at present know. About 1786, moved by the preaching 
of Mr. Garrettson, the Cornwallis people subscribed five hundred 
dollars towards a church building in that township, but the church 
was apparently not then erected. At the same time. Col. Jonathan 
Crane and Mr. James Noble Shannon, together, offered two hundred 
dollars towards the erection of a church at Horton, and it is likely 
that on the basis of their generous gift the Horton chapel was there- 
after almost immediately built. On the last Sunday in May, 1821, a 
new church was opened in Horton, the old one having been moved 
across the road to be converted into a parsonage. In 1818 the Presby- 
terians had completed a new church for their congregation at Horton, 
but without a spire. The new Methodist church was built with a spire, 



EARLY METHODISM 327 

and when it was finished some of the Presbyterians, determined in 
this respect not to be outdone by their neighbours, got together and 
subscribed five pounds apiece to add a steeple to theirs. At Horton 
Corner (Kentville), says the Rev. Dr. T. Watson Smith, Mr. Burt 
''found the frame of a church, which before his removal was form- 
ally opened for worship". At Wolfville he frequently preached 
at the house of Mr. Thomas Andrew Strange DeWolf, and at Starr's 
Point at the house of Mr. Joseph Starr, and in an old dwelling 
which had been altered for the purpose. Through his efforts a 
church was built in what was known as the "Smith "Woods", near 
Canning, where services were also held "until the dedication of a 
new and neat church in Canning in 1854". In Mr. Burt's time or a 
little later, services were also sometimes held at Greenwich and 
Billtown. 

Probably as early as its establishment in Horton, Methodism 
had found a lodgment in Parrsborough, and at some period of which 
we have not the record a small church had been built there. This 
church, says Dr. Smith, "stood near Cross Roads, about two miles 
from the site of the present sanctuary". In 1835-6 a notable 
Methodist revival took place in Parrsborough. 

Undoubtedly the most distinguished family in the present 
county to give countenance and support to Methodism was that of 
Col. Jonathan Crane, at Horton. Mrs. Crane was Rebecca, sister of 
John Allison, Esq., M. P. P., of Newport, Hants county, and both she 
and her brother, though having been bred in Presbyterianism, early 
became members of the Wesleyan body. Col. Crane himself never 
tmited with the Methodists, but to the end of his life took great 
interest in the denomination's welfare. To his noble-minded liber- 
ality, says Dr. Riehey, the congregation was chiefly indebted for 
** their handsome and commodious chapel at Lower Horton, which 
he only lived to see completed" (he died in August, 1820). Of Mrs. 
Crane, Dr. Smith says: "She was the acknowledged centre of a 
group of godly women" ; and Dr. Riehey writes : "Her holy life and 
godly conversation long rendered her a distinguished ornament of 
the Methodist Society". Other noted converts in the county to the 



328 KING'S COUNTY 

Methodist faith were, Mr. and Mrs. James Noble Shannon, first of 
Horton, then for the rest of their lives of Parrsborough, Mrs. Shan- 
non, as we have seen, being Chloe, older sister of Col. Jonathan 
Crane. ''While memory continues to perform its office", says Dr. 
Eiehey, "or the least spark of gratitude remains unextinguished in 
his breast, the compiler of these pages can never forget the parental 
kindness of Mr. and Mrs. Shannon, when in the seventeenth year of 
his age he laboured on the Parrsborough circuit". It may be noted 
here than one of Col. Crane 's daughters, his youngest child, Rebecca, 
became the wife of Samuel Black, a son of the distinguished 
first missionary of Methodism in Nova Scotia. A long letter of Mr. 
Black's, written February 10, 1787, in which he earnestly exhorts his 
correspondent to seek religion, was to "Lawyer Hilton", of Com- 
wallis, who was undoubtedly the lawyer in Cornwallis whom Mr. 
Garrettson about this time speaks of as an important convert. 

In 1834 there were in the county but two Methodist ministers, 
the Rev. "William Temple in Horton, and the Rev. William Smith at 
Parrsborough. In 1860 there were in the county, which then lay 
in what was called the "Annapolis district", the following minis- 
ters: in Cornwallis, the Rev'ds. William Smithson and George 
Butcher; in Horton, Thomas Angwin; in Aylesford, George W. 
Tuttle. 



CHAPTER XX 
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 

The legal disabilities under which Roman Catholics laboured in 
Nova Scotia after the introduction of civil government in 1749, 
were for a long time very great. Of the influence the French 
priests exerted among the Acadians the government had had such 
just cause of complaint that when the first Assembly met in 1758 its 
members conceived it necessary to pass the following severely dis- 
criminating act: "Be it enacted that every popish person exer- 
cising any ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and every popish priest, shall 
depart out of the Province on or before the 25th day of March, 1759. 
And if any such person or persons shall be found in the Province 
after the said day, he or they shall upon conviction be adjudged to 
suffer perpetual imprisonment, and if any person or persons so 
imprisoned shall escape out of prison, he or they shall be deemed 
and adjudged to be guilty of felony without benefit of clergy. And 
be it further enacted that any person who shall knowingly harbour 
any such clergyman of the popish religion, or priest, shall forfeit 
fifty pounds, one moiety to His Majesty for the support of the gov- 
ernment of the Province, and the other moiety to the informer, and 
he shall be also adjudged to be set in the pillory and to find sureties 
for his good behavior at the discretion of the Court". 

In spite of this act, and in the face of the extreme penalties it 
prescribed, it is possible that for some little time after the passage 
of it the veteran missionary. Abbe Maillard, who had remained in 
the province after the expulsion of the Acadians, to attend to the 
needs of the Indians, may have sometimes surreptitiously celebrated 
Mass in Halifax. As we are not sure, howevei*, of the exact date at 
which he left the province, it may be that his work ceased promptly 
at the time the Assembly had set. "During the winter of 1771, Mass 



330 KING'S COUNTY 

was celebrated in Halifax by a priest whose name we have not 
learned, in a barn owned by Hon. Michael Tobin, on South Street. 
The priest, however, from the opposition raised against his services, 
was soon forced to withdraw from Halifax and officiate in "a. 
secluded spot six miles from the town". This spot has been identi- 
fied as Birch Cove. 

Against Roman Catholic laymen, also, before the law, almost 
equally strong discriminations existed. By the first Assembly it 
was enacted that all deeds or wills conveying ''lands or tenements 
to any Papist ' ' should be utterly null and void. Before a man could 
be permitted to hold any public office he must declare unqualifiedly 
against "popery and transubstantiation ", and this latter restriction 
was not formally removed until 1827. In 1783, however, in conse- 
quence of a petition by the Roman Catholics of Halifax to Lieuten- 
ant-Grovernor Hamond, the disabilities under which non-office -hold- 
ing Catholic laymen lived were entirely removed. In 1823, Lawrence 
Kavanagh, Esq., an Irish Catholic, was allowed by the English 
Secretary of State to take his seat as a member of the Assembly 
for the Island of Cape Breton. After this decision, which of course 
formed an important precedent, the question of Mr. Kavanagh 's 
right to sit in the Assembly was debated by the House itself. When 
the vote was put, twenty-one members voted in favour of his being 
allowed to do so, fifteen against. Of the King's County members, 
Samuel Bishop voted for the measure, "William Allen Chipman, Sher- 
man Dennison, and John Wells voted against it. 

July 19, 1784, the frame of St. Peter's, the first Roman Catholic 
Church building in Halifax, was raised almost on the site of the 
present St. Mary's Cathedral, on Spring Garden Road. In 1785 
the Rev. James Jones, of the order of the Capuchins, landed in 
Halifax and took charge of the congregation worshipping there. 
Two years later he was constituted by the Bishop of Quebec, Supe- 
rior of all the Catholic missions in Nova Scotia which had come, or 
under his supervision should come, into being. His jurisdiction 
also included Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, 
and part of the Magdalen Islands. In 1787, it is stated, there were 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 331 

besides Father Jones, but two priests working in all the great field 
over which the Superior's care extended; by 1800, however, ten 
had been added to the number. The first Roman Catholic Bishop 
of Nova Scotia was the Right Rev. Edmund Burke, who was con- 
secrated at Quebec on Sunday, July 5, 1818. For some years before 
his consecration Dr. Burke had been Vicar General in Nova Scotia 
of the Bishop of Quebec. 

Whatever earlier ministration there had been in King's County 
by priests of the Roman Catholic Church, organized Catholic mis- 
sionary labour in the county did not begin until 1853. The parish 
now known as St. Joseph's, with its Church and Rectory near 
Kentville, was at first ''The District of Cornwallis, Kentville, and 
Aylesford", and to this district the Rev. David Canon O'Connor was 
sent in the year mentioned above. On the fly-leaf of the earliest 
St. Joseph's Parish Register are two entries, one stating that the 
Rev. D. O'Connor "took possession of the United District of Corn- 
wallis, Kentville, and Aylesford on the 13th day of June, 1853"; the 
other that the Rev. David Canon O'Connor "arrived in this place 
on Thursday, the 21st day of November, 1860". From the Register 
we also discover that Mr. O'Connor ministered in the county from 
1853 to '57, but that from 1857 to '60 he was absent, his place being 
filled by others, whose names will in the following list appear. The 
priests who have ministered at St. Joseph 's from 1853 to the present, 
are: Rev. D. O'Connor, 1853- '57; Revds, Messrs. Hannigan, Power, 
Madden, Dillon, Butler, and Kennedy, 1857- '59; Rev. D. O'Connor, 
1859- '61; Revd. Messrs. Mclsaac, Kennedy, Butler, and Walsh, 
1861-'63; Rev. Philip M. Holden, 1863-1906; Rev. John Bernard 
Moriarty, 1906 — . The first marriage on the Register was solemnized 
in Kentville, Sept. 16, 1853 ; the second in Horton, Nov. 24, 1853 ; a 
third, in Aylesford, August 21, 1854; a fourth in Cornwallis, Nov. 
8, 1854. In 1853 there were twenty-eight baptisms recorded in this 
large mission field, in 1854, forty. The first Register ends with 
1862, the second begins in the same year. The title-page of the 
second bears the inscription: "Register of Baptisms and Marriages 
kept in the mission of Kentville, Cornwallis, &c. 1862 — ". 



332 KING'S COUNTY 

The Church building of St. Joseph's was completed by December 
10, 1853, and until a few years ago underwent very few changes. 
Recently, however, it has been completely reconstructed, and in a 
beautiful location very near it an attractive Rectory has been 
built. During the long rectorship of the Rev. Philip M. Holden, 
this popular priest occupied his own house on the Beech Hill Road. 
On the 10th of December, 1853, William, Archbishop of Halifax, 
gave formal sanction to the following regulations concerning the 
church : No one but a member of the Roman Catholic Church could 
be a pew-holder; the pews were to be let for five years, at an 
annual rent, to the highest bidder ; the pew rents were to be applied 
for the current expenses, decorations, and repairs of the church, 
under the direction of the Archbishop or Ordinary of Halifax for 
the time being ; an annual account of the receipts and expenditures 
of the church was to be submitted to the Archbishop or Ordinary 
for approval. The first baptisms on the Register number, twenty- 
eight in 1853, forty in 1854. The first marriages number, three in 

1853, four in 1854. The first marriage in the parish was performed 
in Kentville, Sept. 16, 1853, the second "in Horton", Nov. 24, 1853. 
One marriage, August 21, 1854, was in Aylesford, and one, Nov. 8, 

1854, in Cornwallis. The date of the first baptism by Rev. Philip M. 
Holden was August 24, 1863, the last May 19, 1895. 

The following surnames appear on St. Joseph's Parish Register in 
1853: Bond, Brady, Brennan, Christy, Coleman, Connors, Dalton, 
Delahunty, Fitzgerald, Hudson, Galavan, Hanton, Henderson, Mc- 
Dado, McFadden, Kehoe, Lacy, Little, McGarry, Murphy, Ryan, 
Sarsfield, Seferene, Shea, Thomson. The following additional names 
appear in 1854: Burke, Casey, Cornell, Doherty, Dooley, Doyle, 
DriscoU, Fennessy, Foot, Fry, Hamilton, Hare, Harvey, Keanealy, 
Lynch, Lyons, MuUoney, Nugent, Quigley, Redmond, Rogers, Slat- 
tery, Smyth, Sullivan, Sweeney, Tobin, Tully, "Walsh. Later addi- 
tional names on the Register are : Ahern, Arnold, Burns, Carter, 
Conlin, Corbin, Corkery, Delancey, Dorman, Dunne, Griffin, Hanni- 
fen, Kane, Mahoney, McBride, McNally, Nolan, O'Hare, O'Neil, 
Patterson, Reddy, Regan, Roach, Taylor, ToUimore, Trainor, Walker. 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 333 

In the families who since the establishment of St. Joseph's parish 
have been adherents of the Roman Catholic Church in King's 
County, some of the county's most respectable inhabitants have been 
found. Public positions, such as the mayoralty and the postmaster- 
ship of Kentville, representatives of these families have from time 
to time filled, or at present occupy. The shire town of the county 
is proud to number among its citizens such men as Messrs. Joseph 
R. Lyons, Dr. John Mulloney, James W, Ryan, and others like them. 
The oldest tombstone in St. Joseph's Churchyard is that of 
''Martin Ryan, a native of the County Tipperary, Ireland, who died 
December 16, 1838, aged 62". The inscription on the tombstone of 
the Rev. Philip M. Holden is, "To the beloved memory of Rev. 
Philip M. Holden, born in Halifax, N. S., June 19, 1829. Full of 
merits and charitable deeds, lamented by his devoted people, he was 
called to his reward, Feb. 2, 1906, the fifty-third year of his Priest- 
hood, and forty-second year of his Kentville pastorate". The pres- 
ent excellent Rector of St. Joseph 's, the Rev. John Bernard Moriarty, 
was educated at Lavalle Seminary, Quebec, and was connected with 
St. Mary's Cathedral, Halifax, for fifteen years. He was appointed 
Rector of St. Joseph's February 6, 1906. 



CHAPTER XXI 
THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION 

So far as we know no record remains of the schools which may 
have existed in the county in French times, nor have we much more 
knowledge of the earliest schools established by the New England 
planters. Of schools established by the Society for the Propagation 
of the Gospel we have some record, but these S. P. G. schools could 
have given instruction to comparatively few of the planters' chil- 
dren, and although the demands of education were not great, with 
intelligent people like our ancestors they must have been so 
insistent as to lead very soon to the establishment in many neigh- 
bourhoods of small schools where the rudiments of education were 
taught, by women or men. That no trace except in tradition is now 
to be found of these first neighbourhood schools is not strange, for 
they were purely voluntary institutions, coming under no general 
system, and responsible only to the individuals who subscribed to 
them, or later, to the trustees who acted as representatives of the 
people at large. It is probable that in every neighbourhood in the 
county some tradition remains of the exact location of the first 
school-house in that neighbourhood, and possibly of the persons 
who first taught in it, but even in the county town, with reference 
to the teachers, at least, such tradition has been vague and difficult 
to obtain. 

From the S. P. G. Report issued in 1764 we learn that on the 
3rd of February of the preceding year, Mr. Jonathan Belcher pre- 
sented to the Society, with his own strong endorsement, a proposal 
from the Rev. Joseph Bennett, then living at Windsor, that two 
schoolmasters should be sent out by the Society, one for Falmouth 
and Newport, and one for Cornwallis and Horton. The Report says 
that this proposal had been complied with, and that at Horton the 



THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION 385 

people were inclined to make some additional provision for a school- 
master, who, with the salary paid him by the S. P. G., the people's 
voluntary subscriptions, and the use of the land set apart by Gov- 
ernment for the school's benefit, it was thought might live very com- 
fortably. The earliest mention we find of schoolmasters as actually 
in the county is in 1767, when at Windsor and Newport a Mr. Watts 
is reported as being stationed. In the Report for 1769- '70 we find 
as schoolmaster at Windsor and Newport, a Mr. Haliburton, in 
1772-73 we find at Oornwallis and Horton, Mr. Cornelius Fox. 
After 1773- '74 Mr. Haliburton 's name disappears from the list of 
schoolmasters, and Windsor and Newport are no longer spoken of. 
Mr. Fox, however, is found at Cornwallis until 1798, when he 
removed to Cape Breton and Mr. Matthew McLoughlin was appoint- 
ed in his place. The salary of each of these men from the Society 
was ten pounds a year. That Windsor so soon ceased to share for 
purposes of education in the Society's bounty is probably due to the 
fact that the Windsor and Newport people were sufficiently well 
off to make adequate provision for their own educational needs. 

Since the river separated Cornwallis from Horton, Mr. Fox^ 
living as he did in Cornwallis (probably at Fox Hill), could not 
possibly have taught any of the Horton children ; the Horton people 
therefore, must early have established small schools of their own. 
But of these schools, or of any schools that may have been estab- 
lished in Cornwallis, farther west or north than the Town Plot, we 
know absolutely nothing. Much before the close of the 18th cen- 
tury we hear of a school-house near Hamilton 's Corner, but when it 
was built or who first taught in it we cannot now tell. There is 
unfortunately no department of the county's history concerning 
which we know less than the earliest schools. 

In the Halifax Weekly Chronicle of April 20, and 27, and June 
15, 1799, we find the following advertisement for a teacher, though 
for precisely what part of Cornwallis we are not informed: "Any 
person capable of teaching reading, writing and arithmetic, with 
propriety, who can produce a good recommendation for sobriety 
and steadiness of conduct and to whom a residence in the country 



336 KING'S COUNTY 

would be agreeable, will be informed of an eligible situation by- 
applying to Messrs. Charles and Samuel Prescott in Halifax or to 
Joseph Prescott, Esq., or Timothy Eaton, merchant in Cornwallis". 

In 1811 an act was passed by the legislature to establish gram- 
mar schools in the counties of Sydney, Cumberland, King's, Queen's, 
Lunenburg, Annapolis, and Shelburne, and in the districts of Col- 
chester, Pictou, and Yarmouth, the master of each school to receive 
a hundred pounds a year from the treasury, and his assistant if he 
had one, to receive fifty pounds, when over thirty pupils should be 
in attendance. This act was to be in force for seven years; it was 
then extended to the year 1825. [Halifax, during this period, had a 
grammar school under a different act.] In 1812 the grammar 
schools in these different counties were established, that in King's 
undoubtedly being located at Kentville. At a Town Meeting held 
at Cornwallis November 5, 1812, the chairman, David Whidden, 
reported that four hundred pounds had been raised by subscription 
for schools in that township, that eight school-houses had been pro- 
vided, and that six licensed schoolmasters were then teaching under 
the direction of trustees. The meeting nominated as trustees: 
James Allison, David Whidden, William Allen Chipman, William 
Borden, James Dickie and Daniel Cogswell. 

In a notice we have alluded to in the ISlova Scotian newspaper, 
of the naming of Kentville, the intention of the people of the shire 
town to establish a school of the ' ' Madras type ' ' is mentioned. The 
Madras educational system, which took its name from the fact that 
it was first employed in 1795 in the Orphan Asylum at Madras, 
India, by 1811 became very popular in England, and from England 
came to the Maritime Provinces. Its general method was the em- 
ployment of older pupils in the instruction of younger ones, and the 
distribution of both teaching and discipline through various pupil 
bodies. In 1816 the S. P. G. sent out a Scottish Episcopal clergy- 
man, the Rev. James Milne, to introduce the system into Nova 
Scotia and New Brunswick, and this clergyman was soon joined by 
an English schoolmaster, a Mr. West, also sent out by the Society, 
through the exertions of whom a Madras School was opened at 



THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION 337 

Halifax. The date of the opening of this Halifax School was 
1816, but it is clear that the intention of the Kentville men to estab- 
lish a Madras School in King's County was never carried out. 

On the 7th of March, 1825, in the legislature, a joint report of 
a committee of both houses on the subject of schools was read. In 
this report it was stated that in the opinion of the committee two 
hundred and ten additional schools were necessary in the province. 
It was deplored that the salaries of teachers were so low, and it was 
recommended that an assessment should be made on the whole popu- 
lation, to provide for common schools, and that children should be 
taught in them free of charge. The minimum salary to teachers 
should be sixty pounds. 

Of the further progress of education in Nova Scotia, Duncan 
Campbell the historian says: ''In 1832 an Act was passed for the 
encouragement of common and grammar schools, conducted on the 
precarious principle of voluntary subscriptions by the inhabitants 
within the different school districts, the Province not being yet 
deemed in a condition to assume the burden of maintaining a sys- 
tem of elementary education by an equitable assessment on the 
population". In 1835 the number of voluntary schools in the 
province was five hundred and thirty, and the number of pupils 
attending them was fifteen thousand. In King's the number of 
pupils attending school was a thousand. By this time the provin- 
cial treasury was supplementing by a considerable amount the sums 
for education the people in the various counties were raising, but 
the benefits of education were very generally being felt, and the 
people themselves were paying liberally, according to their means, 
for the support of the elementary grammar schools. 

In opening the legislative session of 1841, the Governor, Lord 
Falkland, advocated strongly a scheme of provincial education 
which involved a general assessment for the support of common 
schools. The Governor's proposal the Assembly did not at this time 
adopt, but it amended the old educational act by setting apart six 
thousand pounds annually for the period of four years for the 
support of schools, and by authorizing the Governor and Council to 
appoint five or more Commissioners of Schools for each county, who 



S38 KING'S COUNTY 

were to have the management and control of schools established 
under the new law, this board being required to divide the respec- 
tive counties into school districts. 

In 1848, a fresh attempt was made for a general assessment 
for education, but the final introduction of the present Free School 
system of Nova Scotia was not accomplished till 1864. On the 15th 
of February of that year an Education Bill was introduced by Sir 
Charles Tupper, who was then Provincial Secretary, and its pro- 
visions were explained. The bill proposed a general assessment of 
the people for free schools, and provided facilities for the carrying 
of this principle out. A premium of twenty-five per cent, was to be 
offered to every school founded on the assessment principle and made 
perfectly free. To meet the necessities of poorer, more thinly 
settled districts the bill provided that one-fifth of the entire amount 
placed at the disposal of each Board of Commissioners should be 
set apart for the support of such schools, in addition to the amount 
they were already entitled to receive. In supreme control of educa- 
tion was to be a Council of Public Instruction, and under this body, 
a Superintendent of Education and a staff of paid Inspectors, whose 
duty should consist in periodically inspecting all the schools in 
their respective districts. In each district were to be Examiners, 
one of whom was to be the Inspector, whose duty it should be care- 
fully to ascertain the qualifications of all applicants for license to 
teach. These teachers it was proposed to classify according to their 
proficiency, and to pay without reference to the wealth or the num- 
ber of the population of the district in which they might be engaged 
to teach. 

This enlightened bill now passed the Nova Scotia legislature, 
and henceforth the character of education in King's County, as in 
the other counties of the province, was completely changed. *'The 
Educational Act of 1864", says Campbell, "was unquestionably one 
of the most important measures bearing on the moral and material 
interests of the Province that was ever introduced. It struck at 
the very root of most of the evils that tend to depress the intellec- 
tual energies and moral status of the people. It introduced the 



THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION 339 

genial light of knowledge into the dark recesses of ignorance, 
opened the minds of thousands of little ones, the fathers and 
mothers of coming generations, to a perception of the true and 
beautiful, and placed Nova Scotia in the front rank of countries 
renowned for common school educational advantages". In 1864 
the machinery of the Free School system was completed, and the 
first Inspector appointed for King's County was John Burgess Cal- 
kin, LL.D., already a well-known educationist, a King's County 
man. Dr. Calkin was appointed in the early summer of 1864, and 
assumed office in July of that year. In November, 1865, he resigned 
the position, to take the chair of English and Classics at the Pro- 
vincial Normal School, then under the principalship of Rev. Alex- 
ander Forrester, D. D., and "William Eaton, Esq., of Kentville, who 
since 1854 had been one of the Commissioners of Schools under the 
Act of 1841, was appointed in his place. 

No legislative enactment affecting the interests of a whole 
people ever goes into effect without friction, and there was not a 
single county of the province where great irritation was not pro- 
duced by this revolutionary Free School Act. In spite of the 
general intelligence of the people of King's, in this county there 
were loud protestations on the part of men who had no children, or 
whose children had grown up, against being taxed to support free 
schools, and perhaps not more than one-seventh of the school sec- 
tions throughout the county at first organized schools under the 
provisions of the Act. The spirit of the broader minded men of the 
county was that of Mr. William Stairs of Halifax, who at a public 
meeting in the capital at a much earlier time had said: "I do not 
intend to descant on the exquisite pleasures which learning confers, 
or upon the personal resources, dignity, and independence, derived 
from it, the mastery which it gives over the art and science of 
nature, leading from Nature, as has been beautifully said, to 
Nature's God; or to its fitness to prepare the mind both for its 
duties here and an inheritance hereafter. These are subjects for 
another field, but I put it gravely to this meeting, assembled as we 
are to found and perpetuate a system best adapted to open and 



340 KING'S COUNTY 

perfect the Provincial mind, and thus to promote the virtue, the 
skill, and the happiness of the people, from what cause has it sprung 
that Prussia and Holland on the continent of Europe, and Scotland 
in the United Kingdom, occupy so decided a superiority over the 
nations around them? To bring the illustration nearer home, I ask 
how it is that the people of New England enjoy so unquestionable a 
pre-eminence over those of the sister states in the union? It has 
arisen from their admirable system of education and from their 
having introduced into their common schools, academies, and col- 
leges, all the improvements and principles which have been 
discovered by the intelligence of modern times. From the opera- 
tion of these systems have sprung their skill in manual labour, 
education in public morality, wealth in all the products of intellect 
which give richness and embellishment to social life". But the less 
enlightened men of the county felt only that their taxes would be 
heavier, and that they would not immediately benefit by the new 
law. Especially was this true in the outlying districts, and the 
first two Inspectors sometimes found cold receptions in places 
where their professional duties required them to go. They were 
both, however, men of well balanced judgment and pacific temper, 
and their united four years faithful administration did much 
towards allaying the discontent the new act had aroused. Mr. 
Eaton held the Inspectorship until 1868, when through a change of 
government the Rev. Robert Sommerville, a brilliant young Pres- 
byterian clergyman, recently from the University of Edinburgh, was 
appointed in his place. In 1875, Mr. (now Dr.) Sommerville, who 
for many years to the present has been pastor of the Second 
Reformed Presbyterian Church of New York City, resigned the 
Inspectorship. Since 1875 the position has been ably filled by Mr. 
Colin W. Roseoe. In 1901 there were in attendance at the public 
schools of King's 4,491 pupils; at the high school there were 90; 
and at *' universities" there were 300. 

Among the sons of early King's County planters who taught 
school under the S. P. G. were one of the brothers of William 
Haliburton of Windsor, who, as we have already seen, was 



THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION 341 

S. P. G. schoolmaster at Windsor for several years, and Elkanah 
Morton, Jr., son of Elkanah Morton of Cornwallis, who was 
Master of the Society's Indian School at Sussex Vale, New 
Brunswick, for teaching white children, from 1792 until 
1796. A specimen of the early licenses granted to teachers in 
Nova Scotia is the following from the Governor, Sir John Coape 
Sherbrooke to the Rev. Edward Manning, who for some time 
taught in the school-house near Hamilton's Corner, in which he at 
first preached after he left the Alline Church : 
* ' To the Rev. Edward Manning, 
' ' Greeting : 

**In consequence of the good report of your conduct and moral 
character, and confiding in your integrity and abilities, I do by 
virtue of the power and authority in me vested by His Majesty's 
Commission and Royal Instructions, and by the laws of the Province 
hereby (during pleasure) License and authority you, the said 
Edward Manning, to keep a school at Cornwallis in King's County, 
for the instruction of youth in reading,writing, and arithmetic, you, 
the said Edward Manning first taking the oath of allegiance and 
supremacy and subscribing the declaration before two of His 
Majesty's Justices of the Peace in and for the same County. 

"Given under my hand and seal at Arms at Halifax, this 30th 
day of April, in the 54th year of His Majesty's reign, Anno Domini, 
1814. 

"(Signed) J. C. Sherbrooke". 

"By His Excellency's Command, 
"Henry H. Cogswell, See'y. 

The ideals of common school, education which the early planters 
brought with them from Connecticut were necessarily not very high. 
During the Revolutionary War, says Miss Caulkins in her history of 
Norwich, an institution of higher grade than elementary was sus- 
tained at the Norwich Town Plot. It announced that it would fur- 
nish instruction to "young gentlemen and ladies, lads and misses, 



342 KING'S COUNTY 

in every branch of literature, viz., reading, writing, arithmetic, the 
learned languages, logic, geography, mathematics, etc". But the 
average Connecticut school then could not have been much in 
advance of the dame school of earlier times, where boys and girls 
were taught ' ' to sit up straight and treat their elders with respect ; 
to conquer the spelling-book, repeat the catechism, never throw 
stones, never tell a lie; the boys to write copies, and the girls to 
work samplers". Regarding the educational system of King's 
County, even so late as he himself could remember. Dr. John 
Burgess Calkin says : ' ' There was little machinery in our early Nova 
Scotia educational system. A board of School Commissioners for 
the county, and a board of Trustees for the Section or District, as 
it was called, comprised the whole. The chief duties of the Com- 
missioners consisted in arranging the bounds of the districts, 
licensing teachers, and apportioning government grants. This 
division of the money was not regulated by any fixed law. The 
function of the Trustees was little more than nominal, consisting 
chiefly in signing the teacher's return or report, by which act they 
certified to the correctness of what they knew very little about. In 
those days the teacher's license was issued by the Commissioner's 
Clerk, on the recommendation of the two members of the Board who 
were supposed to examine the candidate. 

"As late as the year 1852, in King's County, an aspirant for 
the teacher's office called on a certain School Commissioner for 
examination and for a certificate. The Commissioner frankly 
acknowledged his lack of qualification for the function of examiner 
and recommended the Candidate to go to a neighbouring member of 
the Board, whose qualifications were better. This gentleman was 
found in the act of shaving. Pausing occasionally during the opera- 
tion he put to the candidate a few general questions. When his 
toilet was completed, however, he requested the young teacher to 
go with him to his little general store. Here the candidate was 
required to solve a question in vulgar fractions, to read a few lines 
from Milton's 'Paradise Lost', and to parse a portion of the pas- 
sage read. All this having been done to the examiner's satisfaction, 



THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION 343 

the certificate was made out and signed, first by him, then by the 
Commissioner earliest called on. Last of all it was presented to the 
Commissioner's Clerk as his warrant for issuing the license. The 
clerk at this time was Mr. John Clarke Hall, Barrister, a lawyer of 
some distinction. 

' ' It was seldom that the Trustees stood in any capacity between 
the people and the teacher. The contract was made directly 
between the 'Proprietors' of the school, as the parents were called, 
and the teacher. The agreement, which was generally carried 
round from house to house by the teacher for the signatures of the 
parents, bound the teacher to conduct a 'Regular School'. Just 
what was meant by the term 'Regular', however, one does not know. 
In addition, or perhaps in explanation, the teacher pledged himself 
to give instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic — the three 
'R's'. Sometimes he added the extra branches of grammar and 
geography. The patrons bound themselves to provide school-room, 
fuel, and board for the teacher. The further item of salary was 
variously designated. Sometimes it was a certain number of pence 
per week for each scholar, sometimes so much per pupil for the 
whole term; or again it was agreed to pay a fixed salary for the 
term, each patron paying his share according to the number of 
pupils he sent. 

"For many years the teacher 'boarded round', that is, lived 
from house to house, his sojourn varying from three or four days to 
as many weeks, according to the number of pupils that the various 
homes sent him. Whatever objections this system had, it had the 
advantage of bringing the teacher into close contact with his pupils 
and their parents. School books in early times were not numerous 
or bulky. Indeed it was not uncommon for a single book, and that 
a slender one, to include the whole course of a child's study. Such 
a comprehensive volume was, 'The New Guide to the English 
Tongue, by Thomas Dilworth, Schoolmaster'. It began with the 
alphabet, then came the spelling of simple words, easy reading les- 
sons, containing such moral precepts as 'Do not tell a lie', and 'Let 
thy hand do no hurt', and after that the spelling of longer words, 



344 KING'S COUNTY 

of two, three, four, or more, syllables. Next came a treatise on 
English grammar, Latin words and phrases in common use, abbre- 
viations used in writing, arithmetical tables, outlines of geography, 
advanced reading lessons in prose and verse, a compendium of 
natural history, illustrated select fables (as that of the wagoner 
and Hercules), and finally a church catechism, beginning with, 
'What is your name?', prayers for morning and evening in the 
home, private prayers, grace before meat and grace after meat. 
All this for one shilling ! ' ' 

Dr. Calkin describes a country school-house: "The school 
room was primitive indeed. On one side was a large open fireplace, 
near which, in a corner, sat the teacher, often writing copies or 
making goose quill pens, while he listened to the small boys read- 
Around three sides of the room were the writing tables, which con- 
sisted of boards about two feet eight inches in width, standing out 
horizontally from the wall. For about eight inches this board made 
a shelf for books, inkstands, and pens, but for two feet the board 
sloped forward. Originally fairly smooth, in the course of time 
this writing table became covered with boys' autographs, made 
with the convenient jack-knife. On the south side of the room, 
opposite the windows, were deep cuttings made by the teacher him- 
self to mark the boundary line between sunshine and shadow at 
different hours of the day, especially at mid-day. The sittings of 
the school room were made of slabs, supported on legs consisting 
of pins or stakes driven into auger holes on the under sides. The 
seats were without support for the back of the pupil, and as the 
room was often used for singing-schools and other evening meet- 
ings the legs were made long enough for full grown persons, and 
necessarily so long that the pupils' legs often dangled in mid air. 
The seats were placed around three sides of the room in front of 
the tables. When pupils were writing they faced the wall, when 
they were not they faced toward the middle of the room. Besides 
these high seats there were two or three of smaller dimensions and 
shorter legs, for the pupils who were in the lowest grade of the 
school. 



THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION 345 

"Perhaps the most unique feature of the old-time school was the 
spelling lesson. The last twenty minutes of the day was devoted 
to the preparation of this lesson. The class, including all who could 
read, sat on the high seats, facing inwards, with full room between 
their feet and the floor for the free play of their legs. All studied 
aloud and they did so with emphasis. As they pronounced each 
letter and syllable and word, they swayed to and fro, keeping time 
in their bodily movements with the rhythm of the voice: 'Big a, 
little a, r n, ron, Aaron' 'H a b, hah, e r, er, haher, dash, dash, 
haherdash, e r, er, haberdasher'. When time was up all took their 
places, standing in a long row, in order, from head to foot. The 
first part of the exercise was the numbering, to see that each had 
his proper place, for there was 'going up and down', and every 
pupil was jealous of his place in the line. Then the spelling began". 

One of the most important educational institutions of the 
county is "Acacia Villa School", or "Patterson's", for boys, at 
Grand Pre, whose buildings stand almost in the centre of the old 
Horton Town Plot, a little above the present railway station. The 
school was founded in July, 1852, by Joseph R. Hea, D. C. L., who 
was its principal until July, 1860. At that time it was purchased 
by Mr. Arthur McNutt Patterson, M. A., who conducted it until 
1907, when he was succeeded by his son, Mr. A. H. Patterson, B. A., 
who for fifteen years had been business manager of the school and 
during part of that time had been on the teaching staff. Besides 
the proprietor, there are in the faculty of the school a head master 
and assistant master, and two or three other teachers. The aim of 
this excellent school is to fit boys physically, morally, and intellect- 
ually, for the responsibilities of life, to give a practical business 
education to those who desire it, and to prepare students to enter 
the several maritime provincial colleges. 

As might be expected from the character of the people, a very 
large number of the sons of King's County men have gone beyond 
the grammar schools and other secondary schools of the county, to 
institutions of higher learning at home and abroad. The next 
chapter in this book will treat of the county's own college, Acadia 



346 KING'S COUNTY 

University, at Wolf ville, but many representatives of King 's County 
have studied at King's College, Windsor. In the roll of King's 
College students have been representatives of the families of Alli- 
son, Barclay, Borden, Chipman, Cogswell, DeWolf, Gilpin, Hamil- 
ton, Harrington, Harris, Inglis, Laird, Preseott, Ratehford, Twining. 
The following King's County men have received from King's Col- 
lege the degree of D. C. L. : Hon Henry Hezekiah Cogswell, M. L. C, 
1847; Sir John Eardley Wilmot Inglis, K. C. B., 1858; Joseph 
R. Hea, M. A., 1858; Robert Bayard M. D., 1871; J. Johnstone 
Hunt, M. A., 1886; Rev. Edward Albern Crawley, D. D., 1888; 
Rev. Silas Tertius Rand, D. D., 1889 ; Sir Frederick William Borden, 
K. C, M. G., 1898 ; Rev. Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton, M. A., 
1905. 

King's County men who have studied at Harvard University 
and have received degrees (the dates given indicate the last year 
the student's name is found in the University Catalogue) have been: 
The College: Frank Herbert Baton, B. A. 1875; Benjamin Rand, 
B. A. 1879 ; Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton, B. A. 1880 ; Everett 
Wyman Sawyer, B. A. 1883 ; Horatio Hackett Welton, B. A. 1884 ; 
Law School : Samuel Denison Brown, 1848 ; Joseph James Sloore, 
1867; Edmund John Cogswell, 1868; Aubrey Blanehard, 1869; 
John Pryor Chipman,. 1869 ; Barclay Webster, 1871 ; William Law- 
son Barss, 1876 ; Frederic Clarence Rand, 1882 ; Allen Edgar Dun- 
lop, 1898; Barry Wentworth Roscoe, 1905. Medical School: Adol- 
phus K. Borden, 1824; John Jeffers, Jr., 1825; Jonathan Borden, 
1841 ; Lewis Johnstone, Jr., 1844 ; John Edward Pryor, 1848 ; Wil- 
liam Archibald, 1851 ; Edward Hill, 1851 ; Peter Pineo, Jr., 1851 ; 
William Gibson Clark, 1852; John Morton Barnaby, 1863; Mason 
Sheffield, 1863 ; John Allen W. Morse, 1864 ; Sommerville Dickey, 
1865 ; Albert DeWolf e, 1866 ; Clarence David Barnaby, 1869 ; Fred- 
erick William Borden, 1869 ; Henry Chipman, 1869 ; James William 
Harris, 1869; Augustus Tupper Clarke, 1870; Gideon Barnaby, 
1871; William Pitt Brechin, 1872; Frank Middlemas, 1873; Wil- 
liam Somerville Woodworth, 1873. Andrew DeWolfe Barss, 1893; 
James Clifford McLean, 1898; James Francis Brady, 1902. 



THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION 347 

Qraduate School : Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton, 1881 ; Ben- 
jamin Rand, 1885; William Fenwick Harris, 1892; John Edmund 
Barss, 1893; Charles Edward Seaman, 1898; John Cecil Jones, 
1902 ; Percy Erwin Davidson, 1905 ; Joseph Clarence Hemmeon, 
1906; Clement Leslie Vaughan, 1906; Ralph Kempton Strong, 
1907 ; Morley DeWolfe Hemmeon, 1908 ; Laurie Lome Burgess, 
1909. Besides these a few have attended the Harvard Summer 
School. 

A few King's County men have studied in foreign universities, 
in Great Britain or on the Continent of Europe, but we cannot 
here give their names. Two of the best known of these, are Arthur 
Webster, M. D,, physician in Edinburgh, whose medical education 
was obtained at the University of Edinburgh, and Dr. Benjamin 
Rand, who studied at Heidelberg University, in Germany. 

Among the lamentable deficiencies in the means of education 
of Nova Scotians at large has been and still is the absence of public 
libraries. In King's County there is no library of much size open 
to the public, except it be the library of Acadia University at Wolf- 
ville. Sometime before the middle of the 19th century a school 
library, containing a good many useful books of various sorts, exist- 
ed at Kentville, the last custodian of it being Mr. Winckworth 
Chipman. About 1860, however, this library was given up and the 
books dispersed. 



CHAPTER XXII 
ACADIA UNIVERSITY 

The next year after the separation of Hants County from 
King's, five Loyalist clergymen of the Church of England who 
purposed removing from the revolting colonies to Nova Scotia, met 
in New York city to perfect a plan that had already begun to shape 
itself in their minds for the establishment in the province in which 
they intended to settle of a "Religious and Literary Institution". 
"When Bishop Charles Inglis came to the newly established Diocese 
of Nova Scotia, in 1787, however, the institution had not been 
founded, and one of Dr. Inglis' first acts was to urge its establish- 
ment. With an appropriation from the provincial treasury of four 
hundred pounds the school was founded at Windsor, and November 
1, 1788, was opened with seventeen students. 

The first schoolhouse was what had been the private residence 
of Mrs. Susanna Francklin, widow of Hon. Michael Franeklin, 
daughter of Joseph Boutineau of Boston, and granddaughter of 
Peter Faneuil of that city. The trustees of the school were Governor 
Parr, Bishop Inglis, Hon. Eichard Bulkeley, Chief Justice Sampson 
Salter Blowers, and Hon. Eichard John Uniacke. The principal 
was Mr. Archibald Peane Inglis, a nephew of the Bishop, who soon 
after became a clergyman and for a good many years ministered at 
Granville, in Annapolis County. The next year an act was passed 
for "Founding, Establishing, and Maintaining a College in this Prov- 
ince", and an appropriation of not more than five hundred pounds 
was made for the erection of a building and for paying a president 
and professors. Besides this appropriation a grant of three thou- 
sand pounds, which was afterwards increased by fifteen hundred 
more, was obtained from the home government, and in May, 1802, 
the college received its charter. With the charter came also the 



ACADIA UNIVERSITY 349 

promise of a thousand pounds a year to defray the current expenses 
of the college, and this annual grant the college received till the 
year 1834. To this initial Nova Scotia college the provincial govern- 
ment was also generous, for until 1851 it annually contributed to 
the expenses of the college the sum of four hundred pounds. Though 
the charter was not obtained until 1802 the institution opened its 
doors to students in 1790, and in twelve years it had had under its 
training no less than two hundred men. 

The committee appointed to frame statutes for the college were 
Bishop Inglis, Judge Alexander Croke, and Chief Justice Sampson 
Salter Blowers, and these gentlemen, ignoring the fact that the 
larger part of the Nova Scotia population was not attached to the 
Church of England, followed so closely the statutes of Oxford Uni- 
versity as to demand of all students subscription to the thirty-nine 
articles. As the provincial government in subsidizing the college 
intended thereby to promote the cause of higher education among 
the people at large, the absurdity, and indeed the gross injustice, 
of making subscription to the articles a prerequisite of admission 
to the college will at once be seen. To render the college still more 
impossible to people not of the Established Church the narrow- 
minded framers of the statutes prescribed that no student should 
* ' frequent the Bomish Mass, or the meeting-houses of Presbyterians, 
Baptists, or Methodists, or the conventicles or places of worship of 
any other dissenters from the Church of England". To the credit 
of Bishop Inglis' intelligence it should be said that he saw the 
unwisdom of such statutes, and protested against them. Chief 
Justice Blowers, however, siding with the wrong-headed English- 
born Judge Croke, the Bishop was overruled, and Congregation- 
alists, Presbyterians, and Baptists were thus barred from the 
college. 

Whatever mistakes in the course of their several histories other 
religious bodies may have made in Nova Scotia, it may justly be 
said that no such act of blind folly has ever been committed as that 
which on the threshold of its existence characterized the Anglican 
founders of King's College. Its evil results have been so far-reaching 



350 KING'S COUNTY 

that the Maritime Provinces, which together are fairly able to support 
one respectable university, now find on their hands to be meagrely 
supported no less than five or six. Under the weight of the dis- 
criminating statutes King's College groaned until 1830, when except 
in the case of professors and fellows subscription to the articles 
was formally abolished. 

The rejection of King's College as a place to educate their 
sons was of course for people not attached to the Church of England 
a foregone conclusion. Sooner or later, therefore, with a people so 
eager for education as the Nova Scotians other attempts at found- 
ing colleges were sure to be made. The first effort was made by the 
Earl of Dalhousie, who was G<overnor of the province from 1816 to 
1819. An intelligent, broad-minded man, Lord Dalhousie saw the 
pressing need of an undenominational college in Nova Scotia, and 
as ew-officio President of the board of governors of King's he made 
an effort to have the obnoxious statutes that had been made for 
that college repealed. Failing in this, he secured from the Imperial 
Government the right to establish a college at Halifax, where no 
sectarian tests whatever should be required, and to which young 
men of all denominations should be equally welcome. On the 22nd 
of May, 1820, the corner stone of the new Dalhousie College build- 
ing was laid at the west end of the Parade, in the centre of Halifax, 
and in two years the building was finished. In spite, however, of 
the fact that the~provincial government had given liberally toward 
the new college, Dalhousie was not opened until 1838. 

In the meantime the leading Baptists of the province had 
united in founding at Wolfville, in King's County, an Academy for 
the education of Baptist young men, especially those who purposed 
entering, or indeed had already entered, the ministry of their 
denomination. The school, of course, was made open to persons of 
any other denomination, but it was founded essentially as a Baptist 
school. The Academy was opened on the first of May, 1829, Rev. 
Asahel Chapin, a graduate of Amherst College, "A Baptist of com- 
petent qualifications, earnest piety and zeal, as well as of unblem- 
ished reputation", being made the first principal. 



ACADIA UNIVERSITY 351 

Shortly before the opening of this Horton Baptist School, a 
very important event had occurred in the ecclesiastical history of 
Nova Scotia. The resignation of Bishop Stanser, the second Angli- 
can Bishop of Nova Scotia, was accepted by the British Govern- 
ment in 1824, and the Rev. John Inglis, who since 1816 had been the 
faithful and beloved Rector of St. Paul's Church, Halifax, was 
appointed in his stead. Dr. Inglis' election to the Episcopate left 
the rectorship of St. Paul's vacant, and the Crown insisted on its 
right to appoint a new rector. For seven years the Rev. John 
Thomas Twining, son of the Rev. William Twining, the Cornwallis 
missionary, a young clergyman who like his father held evangelical 
views and had a spirit of the deepest piety, had been Dr. Inglis^ 
Curate. Under Mr. Twining 's ministrations the spiritual life of the 
St. Paul 's parishioners had been greatly stimulated, and as was very 
natural they desired him to remain as their rector. The British 
Government, however, had another candidate for the place, and 
before long the parishioners learned that the Rev. Robert "Willis^ 
formerly Chaplain of the Flag Ship on the station, and at that time 
Rector of Trinity Church, St. John, New Brunswick, had been 
named by the crown as Dr. Inglis' successor. Feeling that their 
wishes had been disregarded in a most unjustifiable way, the St. 
Paul's parishioners at once entered protest, and from October, 1824, 
until February, 1826, a fierce dispute raged in the parish over the 
right of presentation to the rectorship. In this dispute the Govern- 
ment triumphed, and the Rev. Mr. Willis was finally inducted into 
the rectorship. But as a result of the altercation a disruption of a 
serious nature ensued in St. Paul's; many of the most prominent 
members forsook the old church, and before long, severing them- 
selves completely from the Church of England, joined the Baptist 
denomination and formed themselves into the "Granville Street 
Baptist Church". Among the people who took this course were 
representatives of the families of Boggs, Crawley, Ferguson, John- 
stone, Kinnear, Nutting, Pryor, and Twining, all of whom became 
henceforth closely identified with the history of the Baptists in the 
province, giving the Baptist body the prestige of their social influ- 
ence and cultured worth. 



352 KING'S COUNTY 

Of these converts from Anglicanism to Baptist tenets, the two 
strongest minds were Edmund Albern Crawley, and James William 
Johnstone. It is doubtful, indeed, if on the whole American continent 
two intrinsically greater men in their time could have been found. 
Dr. Edmund Albern Crawley, bom in 1799, was the son of a retired 
naval officer, who had settled at Sydney, Cape Breton, where he 
lived the life of a cultured English gentleman. Prepared by his 
father for King's College, Windsor, Edmund Crawley graduated 
at that college in 1820, and in 1822 was admitted to the Nova Scotia 
Bar. His career began brilliantly, but after his secession from St. 
Paul's and his union with the Baptists he felt impelled to study for 
the Baptist ministry, and in 1830, in Providence, Ehode Island, was 
formally ordained. Eeturning to Halifax he now became pastor of 
the Granville Street Church, and this position he filled faithfully 
until 1839. The Hon. Judge James William Johnstone was the fifth 
son of Dr. William Martin and Elizabeth (Lichtenstein) Johnstone, 
and was born in the Island of Jamaica, August 29, 1792. His early 
education was obtained in Edinburgh, but coming to Nova Scotia 
he studied law with his brother-in-law, Judge Thomas Ritchie of 
Annapolis. After his admission to the bar he practised for a short 
time in Annapolis, then for a little while in Kentville, but later he 
became a partner with Hon. S. P. Robie in Halifax. From 1843 
until his appointment to the Bench as Judge of Equity and Judge 
of the Supreme Court of the province, he was the able leader of 
the Conservative party in Nova Scotia. He was made a member 
of the Council in 1838, Attorney General in 1843, and Judge in 
1869. On the death, in 1873, of the Hon. Joseph Howe, for a short 
time governor of the province. Judge Johnstone was appointed 
governor. At the time of his appointment he was in Europe for 
his health and though he accepted the appointment he did not live 
to get home ; he died at Cheltenham, England, November 2, 1873. To 
the distinguished advocacy of Rev. Dr. Crawley and Hon. Judge 
Johnstone the Baptist Academy at Wolfville largely owed its 
beginning. 

While Dr. Crawley was pastor of the Halifax Granville Street 



ACADIA UNIVERSITY 353 

Church, to supplement his small salary and to gratify his love for 
instructing and otherwise helping young men, he was teaching 
classes in advanced subjects in the Dalhousie College building. 
Shortly before 1838, to meet the urgent needs of the province, he 
suggested a plan for the opening of Dalhousie. The plan was 
adopted, and he himself was promised by the governors a place in 
its faculty. When the college was opened, however, Presbyterian 
bigotry had asserted itself, and because he was a Baptist, Dr. Craw- 
ley had not received the appointment. This violation of good faith 
on the part of the governors of Dalhousie and their narrow sec- 
tarianism, was promptly condemned by Dr. Crawley's friends, and 
especially his associates in the secession from St. Paul's who were 
now members of the Baptist Church of which he was pastor. Stung 
by the personal slight to so noble and cultured a gentleman as their 
friend and pastor, and to the religious body to which they had 
given their mature allegiance, and urged on by the pressing neces- 
sity for a college where truly liberal principles should obtain, they 
got together and in conjunction with the intelligent Baptists of 
King's and others of the western counties of the province, deter- 
mined to found a third college at Wolfville, where already the 
Academy was doing successful work. 

To all broad-minded men in the province the establishment of 
one small college after another seemed a calamity. In the House 
of Assembly a few years later, the Hon. Joseph Howe unsparingly 
condemned the narrow Presbyterian bigotry which had made it 
impossible for the Baptists to throw in their lot with Dalhousie, hut 
the mischief had been done, the Baptists felt that they had been 
insulted, and on the 15th of November, 1838, at a meeting in Horton 
of the Baptist Educational Society, it was unanimously resolved to 
establish a college at Wolfville at once. On the 20th of January, 
1839, in the building of the Academy, the classes of "Queen's Col- 
lege" began. For two years the legislature, a majority of whose 
members properly felt that in a province whose whole population 
was less than 203,000 the establishment of a third college was a 
fatal mistake, refused to grant the Baptists a charter, but the 



354 KING'S COUNTY 

denomination's cause was argued with such ability that in 1840 the 
charter was granted. Before many months the name ''Queen's" 
was changed to "Acadia", and this name the college, now "Acadia 
University", has ever since borne. At the meeting of the Baptist 
Education Society in 1838 two professors were appointed, both of 
well known Halifax Anglican families, and both graduates of King's 
College, the Rev. John Pryor, who had been Principal of the Acad- 
emy since 1830, who was now made Professor of Classics and 
Natural Philosophy, and the Rev. Edward Albern Crawley, made 
Professor of Moral Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Mathematics. 

In 1843, Acadia's first students took their bachelor's degrees. 
The graduates were: John Leander Bishop, James William John- 
stone, Jr., Lewis Johnstone, and Amos Sharp. The class of 1844 
numbered six: George Armstrong, Richard E. Burpee, Samuel El- 
der, Abraham Spurr Hunt, William F. Stubbert, and George Bob- 
bins Wilby. The class of 1845 contained but three : William Almon 
Johnstone, Samuel Richardson, and James Whitman. The class of 
1846 contained five: Edward Anderson, Asahel Bill, Stephen Wil- 
liam deBlois, Lewis Johnstone, and James Sampson Morse. The 
class of 1848 had Harris Otis McLatchy, and John Moser ; the class 
of 1849 had Arthur Richard Ralph Crawley, Henry Thomas Crawley, 
and Elisha Budd DeMille; the class of 1850 had Thomas William 
Crawley, and David Freeman; the class of 1851 had Henry Went- 
worth Johnstone; the class of 1854 had Thomas Alfred Higgins; 
the class of 1855 had Alfred Chipman, Isaac Judson Skinner, Isaiah 
Wallace, and Daniel Morse Welton ; the class of 1856 had William 
Green Johnstone, Thomas Richard Pattillo, and Robert Ralph Philp ; 
the class of 1857 had Robert Dickey Porter; the class of 1858 had 
Charles Henry Corey, George Gilbert Sanderson, Edward Manning^ 
Saunders, Henry Yaughan, Simon Vaughan, and Robert Linton 
Weatherbe; the class of 1859 had Andrew DeWolf Barss, Brenton 
Halliburton Eaton, Daniel Francis Higgins, and Dugald Thomson. 

Of these earlier graduates of Acadia, not a few of whom later 
attained considerable distinction, we find a number of King's 
County men. Andrew DeWolfe Barss, John Leander Bishop, and 



ACADIA UNIVERSITY 355 

Harris Otis McLatchy, were from Horton; Asahel Bill, Alfred 
Chipman, and Brenton Halliburton Eaton were members of well 
known Cornwallis families. In the class of 1860 there were from 
Oornwallis, Theodore Harding Rand, and William Nathan Wick- 
wire; in the class of 1862, from Horton, James Nutting Fitch; in 
the class of 1864, from Cornwallis, Harris Harding Bligh, and 
Edward Manning Cunningham Rand. In later classes, before 1880, 
we find from King's County: Horace Llewellyn Beekwith; Hum- 
phrey, Raleigh H., and Trueman Bishop; James Israel DeWolf; 
Daniel and Frank Herbert Eaton; George Ormonde Forsyth; 
Charles Randall Harrington; Lewis, James Johnstone, and Ralph 
Melbourne, Hunt ; Burton Wellesley Lockhart ; Charles H. Masters ; 
William Abram Newcomb; Benjamin, Charles D,, and Henry 
Walter, Rand; Adoniram Judson Stevens; and George William 
and Theodore Thomas. 

Among the earlier graduates of Acadia, John Leander Bishop 
became a physician, practised for a while in Philadelphia, and at 
the time of his death was chief of an important division in the 
Bureau of Statistics at Washington, D. C. ; Brenton Halliburton 
Eaton, K. C, D. C. L., became a barrister and has long practised 
law in Halifax ; Charles Frederic Hartt was a geologist of note, and 
was for some time professor at Cornell University ; William Almon 
Johnstone, Q. C, practised for years at the Halifax Bar; James 
William Johnstone, Jr., became a county judge; William Green 
Jolinstone was a physician in New Brunswick; Harris Otis Mc- 
Latchy was a physician in Horton ; John Young Payzant and many 
others have practised at the Halifax Bar; Amos Sharp was a 
physician in New Brunswick ; Sir Robert Linton Weatherbe became 
Chief Justice of the province and was knighted, and William 
Nathan Wickwire has long been one of the most distinguished 
physicians in Halifax. 

A large number of the graduates of Acadia have been lawyers, 
physicians, ministers of various denominations, and instructors in 
the higher departments of education, or directors of educa- 
tion. Of educationists are: Albert E. Coldwell, Daniel Francis 



356 KING'S COUNTY 

Higgins, and Robert Von Clure Jones, professors in Acadia College ; 
Rev. Abraham Spurr Hunt, Superintendent of Education for Nova 
Scotia ; Silas Marcus McVane, for many years an honoured profes- 
sor in Harvard University; Theodore Harding Rand, Superintend- 
ent of Education, first for Nova Scotia and then for New Brunswick, 
afterward becoming Chancellor of McMaster University ; and Frank 
Herbert Eaton, who after an influential career as an educationist in 
Npva Scotia became the first director of popular education, and a 
governor of the College of Victoria, in Victoria, British Columbia. 
A distinguished former student at Acadia is Jacob Gould Schurman, 
LL. D., since 1892 President of Cornell University. President 
Schurman won the Canadian Gilchrist scholarship in connection 
with the University of London in 1875, and leaving Acadia gradu- 
ated at the University of London in 1877. From 1880 to '82 he was 
professor of English literature, political economy, and psychology 
at Acadia; from 1882 to '86, professor of metaphysics and English 
literature at Dalhousie ; from 1886 to '92 Sage professor of philos- 
ophy, and for the latter part of the time dean of the Sage School of 
Philosophy at Cornell, in the latter year becoming president of the 
university. 

Between 1880 and '88 the roll of Acadia's graduates shows the 
following students of King's County origin: Walter Barss, M. 
Blanche Bishop, Oliver H. Cogswell, Carmel L. Davidson, Austin 
Kennedy de Blois, John Donaldson, Foster Fitch Eaton, Charles 
William Eaton, Alice Maud Fitch, Clarence E. Grifiin, Walter 
Vaughn Higgins, Benjamin Alfred Lockhart, Joseph S. Lockhart, 
Harry Almon Lovett, Lewis Johnstone Lovett, Vernon F. Masters, 
Albert J. Pineo, Everett Wyman Sawyer, and Harry Hamm 
Wickwire. 

The presidents of the university since its foundation as Queen's 
College have been: 
Rev. John R-yor, D. D., 1847-1850 
Rev. John Mockett Cramp, D. D., 1851-1853 
Rev. Edmund Albern Crawley, D. D., D. C. L., 1853-1859 
Rev. John Mockett Cramp, D. D., 1859- 1869 



ACADIA UNIVERSITY 357 

Rev. Artemas Wyman Sawyer, D. D., LL. D., 1869 

Rev. Thomas Trotter, D. D. 

Rev. William B. Hutchinson, D. D, 

Rev. George B. Cutten, M. A. 

Among professors, instructors, and tutors, besides the presi- 
dents, have been: Andrew DeWolf Barss; Rev. Alfred and Isaac 
h. Chipman; Albert E, Coldwell, M. A.; James DeMille, M. A.; 
Brenton Halliburton Eaton, K. C, D. C. L. ; Frank Herbert Eaton, 
M. A., D. C. L. ; William Elder, M. A., D. Sc. ; D. Francis Higgins, 
Ph. D,, and Thomas A. Higgins, D. D. ; Henry W. Johnstone, B. A. ; 
Robert V. Jones, Ph. D. ; George T. Kennedy, M. A.; E. Miles 
Keirstead, D. D. ; Theodore Harding Rand, M. A., D. C. L. ; Charles 
D. Randall, M. A.; Everett W. Sawyer, M. A.; Rev. Robert Som- 
merville, D. D. ; A. P. S. Stuart, M. A. ; John Freeman Tufts, M. A., 
D. C. L. ; Henry Vaughn, B. A. ; Sir Robert Weatherbe, Kt., D. C. 
L. ; Rev. Daniel M. Welton, D. D., Ph. D. ; and Luther E. Wortman, 
M. A. 

The names of those on whom Acadia has conferred the hon- 
orary degree of Doctor of Civil Law are : 

Theodore Harding Rand, Esq., M. A. 1874 

Hon. D. McNeil Parker, M. D., M. L. C. 1882 

Hon. Sir Charles Tupper, Bart., G. C. M. G., C. B. LL. D. 1882 

Silas Alward, Esq., M. A., K. C. 1883 

Hon. Sir Robert Linton Weatherbe, M. A., Kt., Chief Justice 1883 

George E. Foster, Esq. 1885 

Hon. Judge James William Johnstone, M. L. C. 1886 

Hon. Judge J. Wilberforce Longley, of the Supreme Bench 1897 

Brenton Halliburton Eaton, Esq., M. A., K. C. 1899 

James Hannay, Esq. 1899 

Professor J. Freeman Tufts, M. A. 1900 

Hon. William S. Fielding, • 1901 

Henry R. Emmerson, Esq. 1905 

Frank Herbert Eaton, Esq., M. A. 1905 

Harris Harding Bligh, Esq., M. A. 1906 



358 KING'S COUNTY 

Among men of King's County origin, or who have had long 
association with the county, on whom the degree of Doctor of 
Divinity has been conferred, are: Rev'ds. Ingraham Ebenezer Bill; 
John Mockett Cramp; Charles DeWolfe; Stephen William de 
Blois; Charles K. Harrington; Thomas A. Higgins; E. Miles 
Keirstead; Samuel Bradford Kempton; John Pryor; Silas Ter- 
tius Rand; Edward Manning Saunders; Joseph H. Saunders; 
Charles Tupper; O. S. C. Wallace; Daniel M. Welton. 

The governors of Acadia College appointed by the Lieutenant 
Governor, Legislative Council, and House of Assembly, as provided 
by the original charter, were : Hon. Charles Ramage Prescott, M. 
L. C; Hon. Thomas Andrew Strange DeWolf, M. E. C; Hon. 
Edmund M. Dodd, M. P. P. ; Hon. Samuel Chipman, Esq., M. L. C. ; 
Herbert Huntington, Esq., M. P. P.; Charles W. H. Harris, Esq., 
M. A. The governors in 1843 were : Rev. Ingraham Ebenezer Bill, 
Caleb Rand Bill, Rev. William Burton, Hon. Samuel Chipman, Rev. 
William Chipman, Rev. William Allen Chipman, Rev. Edmund 
Albern Crawley, Hon. Thomas Andrew Strange DeWolf, Hon. Ed- 
mund M. Dodd, Simon Fitch, C. W. H. Harris, Herbert Huntington, 
William Johnson, Hon. James William Johnstone, James W. Nut- 
ting, Hon, Charles Ramage Prescott, Rev. John Pryor, Rev. Charles 
Tupper. The professor of classics in that year was Rev. John 
Pryor; of moral philosophy, logic, and rhetoric, Rev. Edmund Al- 
bern Crawley; of mathematics and natural philosophy, Mr. Isaac 
Chipman. The principal of Horton Academy was Mr. Edward 
Blanchard, his assistant being Mr. Thomas Soley. 

In 1860 the Baptist Education Society in the province had the 
following officers: President, Rev. William Chipman; Vice-Presi- 
dent, Rev. Charles Tupper, D. D. ; Secretary, Rev. Abram Spurr 
Hunt, M. A.; Executive Committee,Rev. Ingraham Ebenezer Bill, 
D. D., Rev. John Mockett Cramp, D. D., Caleb R. Bill, Esq., William 
Johnson, Esq., Simon Fitch, Esq., James Ratchford Fitch, M. D., 
and Ward Eaton, Esq. 

Besides the tradition Acadia University well maintains for effi- 
cient and useful instruction no little classical interest belongs to 



ACADIA UNIVERSITY 359 

the college from its location at the centre of the land of the 
Acadians. To this interest is added the fact that, as we shall see 
in another chapter, many of its students have caught the inspira- 
tion of the scenes it overlooks, and have added their tributes in 
literature to the charms of the beautiful country surrounding 
their alma mater. Of the location of the university the annual 
catalogue truthfully says : 

' ' Wolf ville is a beautiful tow'n in the heart of the country made 
famous by Longfellow's Evangeline. It is situated on the upward 
slope of the southern shore of the Basin of Minas. The University 
buildings are well up the slope and, looking northward, command a 
fine view of the Comwallis Valley, the Basin of Minas, the meadows 
of Grand Pre, the North Mountain, terminating in Cape Blomidon, 
and the distant shores of Cumberland County. It may be said 
indeed that the surroundings of the University are of unsurpassed 
beauty and breadth; and all that the kind face of nature may in- 
spire in a man is here". 

In this history it is hardly necessary to trace in detail the prog- 
ress of the two attendant schools of Acadia University, Horton 
Collegiate Academy, for boys, and Acadia Seminary, for girls. The 
former, as we have seen, began in 1829, the latter not until a much 
more recent period. The person most active in founding Acadia 
Seminary is said to have been the Rev. Thomas A. Higgins, D. D., and 
the first principal of the school to have been Miss Alice T. Shaw, who 
afterward became Mrs. Alfred Chipman. The present principal is 
the Rev. Henry Todd DeWolfe, B. A., and the vice-principal Miss 
Carrie E. Small, M. A. The teacher of French and German for 
some years has been Miss M. Blanche Bishop, M. A., whose name 
appears elsewhere in this book. The principal of Horton Collegiate 
Academy is Chalmers J. Messereau, M. A., and the assistant teachers 
of the school number eight. 



CHAPTER XXIII 
LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 

Few spots on the American continent have become so enshrined 
in literature as the country that centres in the beautiful Horton 
Vjrand Pr4. Some peculiarly subtle charm dwells in the atmosphere 
it carries, that quite independently of the mournful historic Acadian 
tragedy has inspired the imagination and quickened the love of a 
great many writers, both among strangers and men and women 
whom King's County may justly claim as her children. Longfel- 
low's idyllic poem Evangeline has no doubt given the region its chief 
poetic and classic association, and it is evident from the descriptive 
setting of this poem that the New England author felt strongly, 
from afar, the unusual fascination that the country exercises : 

"In the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minas, 
Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand Pre 
Lay in the fruitful valley. Vast meadows stretched to the east- 
ward, 
Giving the village its name, and pasture to flocks without number. 
Dikes, that the hands of the farmers had raised with labor in- 
cessant, 
Shut out the turbulent tides ; but at stated seasons the floodgates 
Opened, and welcomed the sea to wander at will o 'er the meadows. 
West and south there were fields of flax, and orchards and corn- 
fields 
Spreading afar and unfeneed o'er the plain; and away to the 

northward 
Blomidon rose, and the forests old, and aloft on the mountains 
Sea-fogs pitched their tents, and mists from the mighty Atlantic 
Looked on the happy valley but ne'er from their station de- 
scended". 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS S61 

In his pathetic ballad of the poor French Neutral, "Marguerite", 
Whittier likewise shows that from his New England home he too 
had caught the spirit of the region : 

* * But her soul went back to its child-time, she saw the sun o 'erflow 
"With gold the Basin of Minas, and set over Gaspereau ; 
The low, bare flats at ebb-tide, the rush 'of the sea at flood, 
Through inlet and creek and river, from dike to upland wood, 
The gulls in the red of morning, the fish-hawk's rise and fall, 
The drift of the fog in moonshine, over the dark coast- wall". 

The beginning of the native literature of the Minas Basin and 
Gaspereau country is contemporary with the establishment at "Wolf- 
ville of Acadia University. John Leander Bishop, M. D., a Horton 
man and a graduate of the first class that left Acadia, the class of 
1843, some time in the early fifties, a good deal in the tone and 
manner of Scott wrote a descriptive poem on the Gaspereau river, 
in which he loyally contrasts his favourite stream with nearly all 
the great rivers of the American continent. Parts of this poem, as 
one of the earliest inspired by the Minas country, we give further 
on. Poems descriptive of the region were written by Rev. Samuel 
Elder, member of a gifted Hants county family that has also had 
close association with King's. Mr. Elder was graduated in the 
second class that left Acadia, and on his death in 1856 his friend. Dr. 
Bishop, apostrophizing the Gaspereau, wrote in his memory : 

* ' Fair stream ! thou once did 'st proudly own 
A native lyre, of sweetest tone, 
That thrilled beneath the touch of one 
"Who knew and loved thy haunts full well. 
Could tunefully thy legends tell. 
But Elder's graceful pipe no more 
Shall fill thy grottoes as of yore ; 
His song is hushed!" 

Rev. Arthur John Lockhart, ''Pastor Felix ", a native of King's 
on its extreme eastern limit, has written much beautiful verse in- 



362 KING'S COUNTY 

spired by the country. Of the spontaneous charm of his general 
poems much can be said in praise, but in his poems commemorating 
the "Marsh Country", poems like Acadia, Gaspereau, and A Song 
of Exile, we find the peculiarly intimate quality that the region sel- 
dom fails to inspire. His brother, Rev. Dr. Burton Wellesley Lock- 
hart, too, has written verse of much beauty fitly commemorating the 
scenes of his boyhood and early manhood. John Frederic Herbin, 
a descendant of the Acadians, and a long naturalized son of the 
Minas country, has also written delightful lyrics and sonnets and 
some fiction, directly inspired by the region. About the country she 
knew and loved in earlier life, and where now her summer home is 
made. Lady Weatherbe has written much verse of fine quality. From 
Mrs. Irene Elder Morton we have some excellent poems in which 
there is much of the Minas atmosphere, and from a more recent 
writer, Mrs. Lillian Ellis Charlton (nee Ells), we have at least one 
poem which lovingly and fitly commemorates the sweet charm of the 
whole Annapolis Valley. Dr. Theodore Harding Rand's valuable 
anthology, "A Treasury of Canadian Verse", has given Canadian 
literature at large a magnificent impulse, but in his own poems, pub- 
lished not many years before his death, the part of Canada Dr. 
Rand knew and loved best has received treatment so subtle and 
musical that the author will always remain one of the acknowledged 
laureates of the land. 

Although sons only by adoption of the Minas country, for they 
are both by birth New Brunswick men. Bliss Carman and his cousin, 
Charles George Douglas Roberts, have given the world by all means 
the richest and most varied interpretation of any poets of the ever- 
changing moods of King's County's beautiful marshland and mere, 
and of the inspired upland country that centres in the ' * Vale of the 
Gaspereau": 

" The year grows on to harvest, the tawny lilies bum 
Along the marsh, and hillward the roads are sweet with fern. 
All day the windless heaven pavilions the sea-blue. 
Then twilight comes and drenches the sultry dells with dew",— 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 363 

from his Light on the Marsh, gives us a hint of how enchantingly 
Carman can portray the delicate features of the landscape j and, 

** There's a schooner out from Kingsport, 
Through the morning's dazzle-gleam, 
Snoring down the Bay of Fundy 
With a norther on her beam", — 

from his Arnold, Master of the Scud, with what fine rhythm he can 
reproduce action here. In his "Marshes of Minas", and "A Sister 
to Evangeline" Eoberts has given enduring voice also to the historic 
spirit of the country. 

For the preservation of the wealth of Indian legend connected 
with the whole province, including King's County, we are indebted 
to the scholarly interest of the Rev. Dr. Silas Tertius Rand, whose 
"Legends of the Micmacs" is one of the most important contribu- 
tions to native American folk-lore produced in the past fifty years. 
For graphic descriptions of the Minas country and for adding classi- 
cal distinction to King's County's university and preparatory school 
in the vein of Thomas Hughes, the county is deeply indebted to 
Professor James De Mille, among whose interesting books for boys 
are the well known B. 0. W. G. (Boys of Wolfville College), and 
Boys of Grand Pre School. The portrayal in these books of student 
life in "Wolfville about the middle of the nineteenth century has not 
only vivid local interest, but must appeal strongly to youth at large 
for generations to come. In a work of local detail like the present it 
will not be out of place to say that the originals of the chief charac- 
ters in these student-life books of De Mille 's are as follows: Dr. Por- 
ter was the Rev. John Pryor, D. D. ; Mr. Long was Rev. Edmund A. 
Crawley, D. D., D. C. L. ; Bart Damar was Rev. Elisha Budd De 
Mille; Bruce Rawdon was Henry T. Crawley; Arthur Bawdon was 
Rev. Arthur R. R. Crawley; Thomas Crawford was Rev. Thomas 
Crawley; Phil Kennedy was Rev. Stephen "WilHam DeBlois, D. D. ; 
Billy Mack was Rev. William MacKenzie, D. D. ; Pat was Rev. Patrick 
Shields; David Digg was Rev. David Freeman; Jiggins was Rev. 
Thomas A. Higgins, D. D. 



S64 KING'S COUNTY 

THE GASPEREAU 

JOHN LEANDER BISHOP, M. D. 

Sweet mountain stream, whose amber tide 

"With noisy haste, or softest glide, 

Like childhood's bright inconstancy, 

Pursues its journey to the sea, 

And winds in many a graceful sweep 

"Where blossomed wild-flowers silent weep 

Upon thy marge the fragrant dews 

That evening's humid steps diffuse. 

At intervals scarce seen amid 

The herbage of the valley hid, 

"Whose wild luxuriance reveals 

The fertile wave its growth conceals, — 

In soft and mazy dance to stray, 

I've watched thy gentle winding way, 

As leaping o'er its rocky bed 

Thy shallow current downward sped. 

Or deeply, smoothly slid away 

"Without a ripple or a spray. 

And I have dreamed, tho' scarce to song. 

As yet, thy humble name belong, 

That not the travelled summer gale 

E'er stepped within so sweet a vale 

As that upon whose bosom bright 

Thy current shapes its line of light, 

"Where, issuing from the dark ravine, 

Thy forest-shadowed wave is seen 

To check its tide, that many a mile 

Had fretted in the dark defile, 

"Where frowning o'er their subject flood 

Thy mural precipices stood. 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 365 

My thoughts, tho' seldom now I may 
Beside thy murmuring waters stray, 
Oft turn, by fond remembrance led, 
Where those gray rocks obscurely shed 
Their image on thy foaming wave. 
Whose eddying course was wont to lave 
Their shelvy base, where in and out 
The salmon and the speckled trout 
Gliding, were frequent captives made 
By patient angler in the shade ; 
While sweetly on the branch above 
The wild-bird tuned his note of love ; 
Or mingled with thy murmur still 
Its monotone, the distant mill; 
And sloping sky-ward from thy shore, 
Those hills a fadeless mantle wore 
Pf fragrant spruce and hemlock green, 
Where the sun's latest rays were seen, 
And in the glade, with Spring's first glow, 
The mayflower bloomed amid the snow. 

I've seen the dancing foam-wreath fleck 

The darkly rolling Kennebec ; 

And swiftly on his shining track 

Flow down the busy Merrimac; 

Seen leaping from his piny hills, 

Augmented by a thousand rills. 

Where art, wealth, taste their graces blend, 

The fair Connecticut descend. 

His cultured vales, with fertile wave 

I've seen the gentle Mohawk lave; 

Imperial Hudson glide in shade 

'Neath his eternal palisade; 

Startled the fawn on hills that fling 

Shadows on blood-stained Wyoming, 



366 KING'S COUNTY 

And lingering o'er the classic vale 
Have matched the sadly tragic tale 
And sorrows of sweet Gertrude's line 
"With those of thine Evangeline. 

****** 

And villa 'd banks and cities fair, 
Glassed in the magic Delaware ; 
Her midnight lamp have seen, — the moon, 
O'er hidden Schuylkill hang in June; 
And the fierce day-star faintly gleam 
On "Wissahickon 's shaded stream ; 
Beheld in transport from the steep, 
Through his wild gorge, Potomac leap ; 
And gathered the flinty arrow head 
By the wild Lehigh 's rocky bed. 
I've watched the Spring his pride renew 
On Susquehanna's hills of blue, 
And Autumn's lovely tints grow pale 
In Juniata's winding vale. 
****** 

But, chief, where Nature wears a mien 
Both grand and beautiful, have seen, 
Awe-struck, Niagara rush amain 
Down the abyss, then mount again 
In silver spray, whereon the glow 
And radiance of the lunar bow 
"Were cast, — then turned to muse awhile 
In bowered walks on moonlit isle. 
Where every tree seemed tenanted 
By a weird sister of the wood ; 
And each dark rock I well could deem 
Held guardian naiad of the stream, 
That in the midst and solemn roar 
Of the great flood dwelt evermore; 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 367 

And I have felt in all its power 
The witchery of the place and hour. 

To scenes like these with fealty true 

My heart hath paid its homage due ; 

Yet not less constant, nor less free, 

Dear native stream! hast turned to thee, 

In proud remembrance turned, and then 

As oft in fancy pressed again 

Thy pleasant banks, and pined to view 

All that my early footsteps drew ; 

To hear the once familiar dash 

Of leaping waves, that loudly lash 

Thy rocky bound of basalt gray, 

Fire rifted in an earlier day ; 

Or climb thy fir-clad hills to gaze, 

Delighted, on the silvery maze 

Of waters stealing through the meadow, 

Half in (clear) sunlight, half in shadow; 

Or mark the tall elm far away 

Fling on the air its graceful spray, 

Fairest of trees — or hill and plain 

"Wave their green seas of bladed grain ; 

Or list the notes in swampy brake 

The wood-thrush and the linnet make. 



THE SOUL IN DREAMLAND 

FROM A POEM BY SAMUEL ELDER 

Skies with softest radiance glowing, 
"Winds with gentlest breezes blowing. 
Streams with sweetest murmurs flowing. 
Their holy calm dispense. 



368 KING'S COUNTY 

Clouds in dreamy beauty sailing, 
Silvery mists the blue hills veiling, 
Woods and flowers their balm exhaling, 
Breathe peace in every sense. 

As on couch of ether sinking, 
Odors, light, and beauty drinking. 
Musing gently, gently thinking. 

So my soul reposeth, 
Some sightless Power around me stealing. 
Known but to my inward feeling, 
All other sights and sounds concealing, 

A Spirit world discloseth. 



A SONG OF EXILE 

BY ARTHUR JOHN LOCKHART 

land of fragrant fields, and living streams ! 
O land of swelling waters! unto thee 

1 turn my eyes, — thou fair abode of dreams! 
Thou blossom-country, girdled by the sea! 
Again the linnet sings his song to me ; 
Again the Whitethroat warbles ; and once more 

I tread the chambers of the sun, made free 
From care, initiate to the mystery 

Of rushing tides by every sounding shore. 

Ye hills of home ! ye bonnie native woods 
Of mine own land ! are ye yet musical, 
As when I loved beneath your shade to dwell ? 

Are your seats haunted by soft singing broods? 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 369 

Does the Woodpecker haunt your solitudes 
With his loud tapping bill, — the golden-winged 

And the familiar? Are the lyres all stringed, 
Of your sweet-breathing pines whose interludes 

Between the whispering leaves so won mine ear? 

Or comes to you the Bluebird's carol still? 

Does Kobin April's evening silence fill 
With the old cheery sound, so sweet to hear? 

— So many friends are gone, it soothes my pain 

To think how yet thy singing birds remain. 



O Land ! my land ! to thee the Spring returns ; 

The Summer hastens on a thousand wings, 
With thy rejoicing birds ; and my heart yearns 

For all thy balmy, gentle ministerings. 
sweet Acadian Land ! my Father's Land ! 

The Land of the Arbutus and the Pine ; 
Haunt of the Robin, — memory-haunted strand, 

Can I forget that thou art mine, — ay, mine ? 
Loved, lost, estranged, — yet it forbids despair 
To think thy smiling vales, thy singing birds, are there. 



I see thee when the Dandelion blows ; 

In Buttercups and Daisies thou art fair; 
I greet thee in the wild Brier and the Rose; 

I see thee when thy sunset skies do wear 
The glowing garb that Summer only knows ! 
Home ! loved Home, I may not visit more ! 

And O, dear graves, where mine may never be ! 
To you I send, — to you, my native shore ! 

The Message-Swallow and the Courier-Bee, 
To ask of thee thy wonted woodland-lore : 

— Say, have the birds come back to Acadie? 



370 KING'S COUNTY 

THE GASPEREAU VALLEY 

BY ARTHUR JOHN LOCKHART 

The days that were come back again, — 

Thy scenes their wonted joys renew 
My heart is touched with pensive pain 

As now they lighten on my view, — 
Thy murmurous haunt of birds and bees, 

Thy bowery river's distant glow, 
Thy quiet walks, 'mid orchard trees, 

happy, happy Gaspereau! 

Low in the shelter of the dale 

The river's circling silver flows, 
And plats of verdant intervale 

Have hedges of the wilding rose ; 
Embowered in elms, my fancy sees 

The roof-tree of the f armh-ouse old ; 
And, peep'd from leafy apple-trees 

Bright spheres of red, and green and gold. 

I hear the farm-boy's whistled tune, 

As slow he walks behind his team ; 
I see the kine, at sultry noon. 

Stand in the willow-shaded stream; 
And, lingering with fond delay 

While evening comes serenely still, 
"Watch the retiring flame of day 

Through pines that plume the western hill. 

The air with wild-flower scent is sweet ; 

And where yon lucent waters glide. 
The blue-flag and the sedge repeat 

Their image in the stilly tide ; 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 371 

The willowy bridges, — elm trees tall, 
The dripping mill-wheel turning slow, 

The white church-tower, I see them all, 
happy, happy Gaspereau! 

Oft memory on the track returns 

By which my life the earliest came; 
And Fancy many a scene discerns. 

And lists to many a magic name; 
Then do thy woods and streams appear 

With paths my wandering feet did know, 
And all thy music meets my ear, 

O winding vale of Gaspereau! 

How oft, from yon hill's dark'ning brow. 

Where twinkles first the evening star, 
I've watched the village windows glow 

At sundown in the vale afar; 
Or from the shadowy bridge leaned o'er 

The river's glimmering darks below, — 
Breathed freshness of the sylvan shore. 

And heard the songs of long ago. 

'Twas here of old a people dwelt 

Whose loves and woes the poet sings; 
The beauty of these scenes they felt 

When, 'mid the golden evenings, 
They set the willows, lush and green, 

Now in their gnarled, fantastic age, 
That, with their blacken 'd, broken mien 

Still stand, the black-bird's hermitage. 

Woe fell on you, ye genial race — 

Ye exile sons of lily France! 
This is no more your dwelling place, — 

Ye live in music and romance ; 



372 KING'S COUNTY 

But oft as purple eventide, 

Bathes all these hills in fire and dew, 

Some wanderer by the riverside 

Shall drop a tear, and dream of you. 

The vale still rings with childhood's song 

Amid its yellowing sea of flowers, 
While days of Summer glide along 

On wings of light through all your bowers ; 
Here are the trees ye planted — here. 

The remnants of your broken homes ; 
But to old graves, from year to year. 

No ghostly mourner ever comes. 



AN ACADIAN AT GRAND PRE 

BY JOHN FREDERIC HERBIN 

To-day, alone of all my scattered race, 

I see again the beauty of our land. 

Made fair and fruitful by a banished hand ; 
Endeared of tongue never to know this place. 
Meadows and dykes, and hearths long cold I trace ; 

And tyrant tides never to brook command. 

Where undisturbed the rustling willows stand, 
And the curved grass, telling the breeze's pace. 

Before the march of power the weak must bend, 
And yet forgive. The savage strong will smite. 
The glossing words of reason and of song. 
To tell of hate and virtue to defend. 
Shall never set the bitter deed aright, 
Nor satisfy the ages with the wrong. 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 373 



THE DYKES OF ACADIE 

BY JOHN FREDERIC HEREIN 

marshes green, the dykes of Aeadie, 

I have been nursed upon your ancient breast, 

And taught your patience and your heart's calm rest, 

Your large content and fine serenity ! 

How many lessons have you given me ; 
Until reborn to deeper life, and blest, 
You made me strong for every season 's test ; 

And all I am, dykes of Aeadie ! 

So would I live your life of growing days, 
Absorbing all, and giving all the gains; 

Accepting skies that shine, or snow, or shower ; 

To lift like any blade of grass that plays 
In sun and breeze ; to age like you, dear plains. 
The better to be young with fruit and flower. 



AFTERMATH 

BY JOHN FREDERIC HEREIN 

August is hot in the flood of the summer sun, 
Lolling and still in fields and windless places ; 

Idle all day like a woman with hair undone, 
Her feet unshod, her bosom bare of laces. 

All her passion and pride, her beauty and strength are born 
Mature, and grown to power beyond disguising. 

Her nights stay longer, and each later morn 
Her ardor yields not to the Autumn rising. 



374 KING'S COUNTY 

Hotter comes her breath, her touch is harsh 

Where the scythe has bared the grassy slopes and meadows ; 
On the breathless sea, and the stifled miles of marsh, 

Where spruce and willow lose the cool of shadows. 

Yet the dewy nights are sweet ; and the lagging dawn 
Awakes to the ringing scythe, like a heavy sleeper ; 

And the dyke-ward drift of the tide with the marsh-hay mown, 
Drives off the cranes from the hidden creeks grown deeper. 

Sometimes as horse and troopers march asleep, 
Unheard the iron shoes and clanking sabres ; 
The tide floods still in the van of the rapid deep 
Through creek-cut marshes and up winding rivers. 

Now a ship like a gull swings off the anchoring clay. 
And drifts with the fisher-craft from the nearer offing; 

While the inshore flight of the gulls on the edge of day 
Startles the silent flats with joyless laughing. 

As the sea drifts in, the toilers deep in the tide 

Gather the grass, as fishermen drag the meshes — 

Hunters surrounding the game on every side, 
Till the spoil is captive in the binding leashes. 

Trumpet-like the call of the herds long-blown 
Wafts mellow and far to the drowse of the sense 's hearing ; 

The perfumes fresh from the marshy levels mown 
Bring taste of the tide whose overflow is nearing. 

Still the meadows are the mower has shorn, 

Where the clover stood, and perfumes rose from the flowers ; 
And the stubble stark where the summer's yield was borne 

Now seemeth dead to the sun and the touch of showers. 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 375 

From the empty bams have the hollow echoes fled; 

The lofts are loaded high with the grassy sweetness. 
The grain un garnered and ripe swings lazy head, 

And all the corn is bursting with its greatness. 

Leaning hay-ricks dark rise everywhere 

Across the meadows and the waters looming. 
The higher tides flood the marshes unaware, 

Among strange ways and newer channels roaming. 

September comes to the bare burnt places, and cools 
With gentle touch and breath, a glad new-comer; 

Refreshing the languorous lakes and the dying pools, 
The wide-eyed mistress of the after-summer. 

Fragrant are the orchards ripe of fruit, 

And fairest the flowers of the autumn bringing. 

Songsters seem to be wording a second suit. 
So eager and so joyful in their singing. 

Primroses yet are blown, and the thistle abloom, 

The August-flower bright from the bud its month gone over. 

Asters smile near the rushes' damp and gloom. 
A sweetness lingers near the thrifty clover. 

The whirl of the marsh-peep, cloud of grey and sheen. 
At noon at the edge of the spent and silvery tide ; 

The clear, far cry of the curlew yet unseen, 
Give life to the empty reaches red and wide. 

The season will not die though all the dykes 

Seemed to the roots destroyed by the ruthless mower. 

Where now the cattle graze, and the marsh-hawk strikes, 
Are the fields of aftermath of the secret sower. 



376 KING'S COUNTY 

BY THE GASPEREAU 

BY BURTON WELLESLEY LOCKHART 

Do you remember, dear, a night in June, 

So long, so long ago, 
When we were lovers, wandering with the moon, 

Beside the Gaspereau? 

The river splashed and gurgled thro' its glooms, 

Slow stealing to the sea, — 
A silver serpent ; in the apple blooms 

The soft air rustled free. 

And o'er the river from afar the sound 

Of mellow tinkling bells 
From browsing cattle stirred the echo round 

In gentle falls and swells. 

No sound of human sorrow, nor of mirth. 

Streamed on that peace abroad, 
And all the night leaned low upon the earth 

Like the calm face of God. 

And in our hearts there breathed, like life, a breath 

Of most delicious pain. 
It seemed a whisper ran from birth to death, 

And back to birth again. 

And bound in airy chains our shining hours, 

Past, present, and to come. 
In one sweet whole, strong to defy the powers 

Of change, till Time be dumb. 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 377 

Yes, you remember, dear, that night in June, 

So long, so long ago, 
"When we were lovers, wandering with the moon, 

Beside the Gaspereau. 



THE LOOK OFF 

BY EDWAED BLACKAJJDER 

I stood upon the mountain 's towering brow, 

I saw beneath, around, a scene sublime, 

Unmatched upon the earth, in any clime; 
Westward, for many a league, the vale below 
Lay in its loveliest, and in the show 

Of village, mead, and silver-shining stream ; 

Distant, extended like some heavenly dream, 
Lost in the splendour of the sinking glow, 
A hamlet at my feet ; and, eastward wide, 

Spread the wild waters o 'er their shifting sand ; 
And many a white sail passing I descried, 

That silent glided to some far-off strand : 
Then straight my being thrilled with conscious pride, 

That all this beauty was my native land. 



FROM PARTRIDGE ISLAND 

BY EDWARD BLACKADDER 

Grand as the scene that on the Patmian shore 
Rose on the vision of the Sainted Seer, 
"Was that : Below, expanded far and near 

The majesty of waters, southward -o'er 



378 KING'S COUNTY 

The billows, Blomidon dark-looming bore 

His shroud of mist ; and where the surges sweep, 
Westward, steep frowned defiance unto steep, 

While Fundy's floods fierce intervening roar. 

Ships, there, full-sailed, or anchored in the shade 
Of promontory high, or verdured isle, 

Told of emprize and nation-building trade 
Which bids with bloom the arid desert smile; 

And over all the westering day-star played, 
With shafts of mellow radiance, the while. 



LOVE'S WELCOME 

BY IRENE ELDER MORTON 

Blow, Summer winds from Orient Isles; 

Thro' Summer days prolong 
Your incense-breathing choruses 

In fullest tide of song, — 
For Love has come. 

Bloom, Summer flowers in Summer fields ; 

Empty each perfume cup 
Upon the bosom of the winds; — 

Let glad hearts drink it up, — 
For Love has come. 

Gleam, Eastern skies, with rosy light ; 

Flash out your golden beams 
Across the zenith to where dips 

The Western Isle of Dreams, — 
For Love has come. 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 379 

Shine bright upon us, Stars of night, 

From azure fields afar; 
Build up to heaven a shining track, 

For Love's triumphal car, — 
For Love has come. 



INDIAN SUMMER IN THE GASPEREAU VALLEY 

BY LADY WEATHERBE 

Calm, like a trance, enwraps the sheltered vale, 
Save whence the azure-cradled clouds low lie, 
Faint whispers reach me of a minstrelsy 

Which ere November's advent choir 'd the dale; 

And far away an even-stroking flail 

Sounds thro' the stillness, like the measured sigh 
That heralds death. Athwart the woodland high 

Still faintly flames a gold and crimson trail. 

No ripple stirs the river's brimming tide, 
Beneath whose burnished surface, broad and blue, 

The hills dip silently, and cloudlets hide 
The treasures pillaged from the sunset hue, 

And tremulous as love, and chaste as snow, 
One pallid star hangs o'er the afterglow. 



NOON-DAY IN THE GASPEREAU 

BY LADY WEATHERBE 

Sheltered beneath the hill's protecting sway, 

Stretch goodly lands, where gleaming orchards meet 

Through vale and upland, mile on mile, a sheet 



380 KING'S COUNTY 

Of snowy bloom. The laughing meads are gay 

With color, every bud and quivering spray 

Exhaling gracious incense. Clear and sweet 

Above the babbling stream, from some retreat 

Rings out the bob 'link's joyous roundelay. 

Scarce stirs desire or thought — the soft June grass 

Where shadows linger 'neath the bloomlit trees 

Entreats repose, regrets and longings pass, 

And as the gradual tones of labor cease, 

The hush of noon, like some sweet morn's first Mass, 

Descends in benediction, great with peace. 



DALLIANCE 

BY LADY WEATHEEBE 

A woodland path, and the young day 
Drenched with the odorous breath of May, 
Beyond, the rugged, steep, highway. 

One sang within the pleasant shade, 

"So sweet these flowers of Spring," he said, 

"I'll rest; the day is long, then tread 

My journey's road". Spring's leafy bower 
Bourgeoned to beauty hour by hour 
And smiled the sun, and wept the shower, 

And golden-winged the moments flew, 
For life was glad, and skies were blue. 
The past was far, and ills were few. 

The summer roses came and went, 
Beauty and love together blent, 
Enfolded him in large content, 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 381 

Till over crimsoning wood and wold 
October, yellow-tressed and bold, 
Threw mockingly her web of gold. 

Kindled anew the browning sod, 
Where drowsed on withered stalks a-nod 
Pale asters, and spent golden-rod. 

Low o'er the dusk a single star 
Leaned sadly, as the moaning bar, 
Stern Winter's herald, called afar. 

Slowly the wild notes surge and swell 
With ceaseless rhythm of sad farewell, 
Hope's dirge, and pleasure's dolorous knell. 

Again the daisy tips the lea, 

Sweet Spring days lure, come bird and bee, 

But he that sang cries, "Woe is me!" 



A SONG OF THE HAPPY VALLEY 

[Addressed to the author of a poem entitled Over the Hills Where 

Spices Grow.] 

BY LILLIAN ELLIS CHARLTON 

They call him the ' ' Happy Shepherd ' ' ; and here in the city 's glare 
We list to his music floating from pastures broad and fair, — 
To songs of woodland and meadow, mountain and sea and sky, 
That he learned in the "Happy Valley", in days that are long gone 

by. 



382 KING'S COUNTY 

Songs of the still, dim forest, where, after the winter snows, 
Close to the last pale snowdrift the early Mayflower blows ; — 
Songs of a world a-blooming with daisies o'er hill and lea, 
And pine-boughs tenderly crooning to the music of the sea. 

Songs of the blossoming orchard, scent of the new-mown hay, 
Breath of the wild red roses that grow by the dusty way, 
Gold of the bounteous harvest, shining 'neath heaven 's blue, — 
These he sings as we listen, — the songs of the home we knew. 

For they of the Happy Valley may wander the wide world o 'er, 
May ride o 'er the tossing billow, or linger an foreign shore ; — 
Yet still from their eyes no vision of the olden time departs. 
They carry the Happy Valley deep in their heart of hearts ! 

Ah ! God hath given us gladness in these later homes of ours, 
Joy lilts to us at the hearth-stone, or sings in the summer flowers ; 
Yet at times through her thrilling cadence there trembles a minor 

strain, — 
The song of a day that has vanished, and never may come again ! 
And Heaven seems nearer, nearer, since those we loved are there, 
Who passed from the Valley's beauty to breathe in its holier air; — 
How sweet, when the last long shadows droop over our drowsy eyes, 
To dream of the Happy Valley, — and to wake in Paradise ! 



TIDES 

BY CHARLES GEORGE DOUGLAS ROBERTS 

Through the still dusk how sighs the ebb-tide out. 
Reluctant for the reed-beds! Down the sands 
It washes. Hark ! Beyond the wan grey strand 's 
Low limits how the winding channels grieve, 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 383 

Aware the evasive waters soon will leave 
Them void amid the waste of desolate lands, 
Where shadowless to the sky the marsh expands, 
And the noon-heats must scar them and the drought. 



THE FIR WOODS 

BY CHARLES GEORGE DOUGLAS ROBERTS 

The wash of endless waves is in their tops, 
Endlessly swaying, and the long winds stpeam 
Athwart them from the far-off shores of dream, 
Through the stirred branches filtering, faintly drops 
Mystic dream-dust of isle, and palm, and cave. 
Coral and sapphire, realms of rose, that seem 
More radiant than ever earthly gleam 
Revealed of fairy mead or haunted wave. 



AYLESFORD LAKE 

BY CHARLES GEORGE DOUGLAS ROBERTS 

All night long the light is lying 
Silvery on the birches sighing, 
All night long the loons are crying 

Sweetly over Aylesford Lake. 
Berry-Copse and brake encumber 
Granite islands out of number; 
All night long the islands slumber, 

But my heart is wide awake. 



384 KING'S COUNTY 

BLOMIDON 

BY CHARLES GEORGE DOUGLAS ROBERTS 

There is that black rock bastion, based in surge, 
Pregnant with agate and with amethyst, 

Whose foot the tides of storied Minas scourge, 
Whose top austere withdraws into its mist. 

This is that ancient cape of tears and storm. 
Whose towering front inviolable frowns 

O'er vales Evangeline and love keeps warm. 
****** 

By permission of the publishers of Mr. Roberts' books, Messrs. 
L. C. Page and Co. of Boston, we are able to give the above extracts 
from poems, of which Mr. Roberts has many, on the Minas country. 
Ave, The Tide on Tantramar, Whitewaters, The 8alt Flats, Where 
the Cattle Gome to Drink, When Milking Time is Done, The Vengeance 
of Glooscap, and others, all exquisitelypnterpretthe country's moods. 



LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRE 

BY BLISS CARMAN 

The sun goes down, and over all 
These barren reaches by the tide 

Such unelusive glories fall, 

I almost dream they yet will bide 
Until the coming of the tide. 

And yet I know that not for us, 
By any eestacy of dream. 

He lingers to keep luminous 

A little while the grievous stream, 
Which frets, uncomforted of dream- 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 385 

A grievous stream, that to and fro, 
Athrough the fields of Acadie, 

Goes wandering, as if to know- 
Why one beloved face should be 
So long from home and Acadie. 

Was it a year or lives ago 

We took the grasses in our hands, 

And caught the summer flying low 
Over the waving meadow lands, 
And held it there between our hands ? 

The while the river at our feet — 

A drowsy inland meadow stream — 
At set of sun the after-heat 

Made running gold, and in the gleam 

We freed our birch upon the stream. 

There down along the elms at dusk 

We lifted dripping blade to drift, 
Through twilight scented fine like musk, 

Where night and gloom awhile uplift, 

Nor sunder soul and soul adrift. 

And that we took into our hands 

Spirit of life or subtler thing — 
Breathed on us there, and loosed the bands 

Of death, and taught us, whispering, 

The secret of some wonder-thing. 

Then all your face grew light, and seemed 

To hold the shadow of the sun ; 
The evening faltered, and I deemed 

That time was ripe, and years had done 

Their wheeling underneath the sun. 



386 KING'S COUNTY 

So all desire and all regret, 
And fear and memory, were naught ; 

One to remember or forget 

The keen delight our hands had caught ; 
Morrow and yesterday were naught. 

The night has fallen, and the tide .... 
Now and again comes drifting home, 

Across these aching barrens wide, 
A sigh like driven wind or foam: 
In grief the flood is bursting home. 



MARIAN DRURY 

BY BLISS CARMAN 

Marian Drury, Marian Drury, 

How are the marshes full of the sea ! 

Acadie dreams of your coming home 

All year through, and her heart gets free,- 

Free on the trail of the wind to travel. 
Search and course with the roving tide. 

All year long where his hands unravel 
Blossom and berry the marshes hide. 

Marian Drury, Marian Drury, 

How are the marshes full of the surge ! 

April over the Norland now 

Walks in the quiet from verge to verge. 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 387 

Burying, brimming, the building billows 
Fret the long dikes with uneasy foam. 

Drenched with gold weather, the idling willows 
Kiss you a hand from the Norland home. 

Marian Drury, Marian Drury, 

How are the marshes full of the sun! 
Blomidon waits for your coming home, 

All day long where the white wings run. 

All spring through they falter and follow, 

Wander, and beckon the roving tide, 
Wheel and float with the veering swallow, 

Lift you a voice from the blue hillside. 

Marian Drury, Marian Drury, 

How are the marshes full of the rain ! 
April over the Norland now 

Bugles for rapture, and rouses pain, — 

Halts before the forsaken dwelling, 

Where in the twilight, too spent to roam, 

Love, whom the fingers of death are quelling, 
Cries you a cheer from the Norland home. 

Marian Drury, Marian Drury, 

How are the marshes filled with you! 
Grand Pre dreams of your coming home, — 

Dreams while the rainbirds all night through, 

Far in the uplands calling to win you 

Tease the brown dusk on the marshes wide; 

And never the burning heart within you 
Stirs in your sleep by the roving yon tide. 



388 KING'S COUNTY 



IN APPLE TIME 

BY BLISS CARMAN 

The apple harvest days are here, 
The boding apple harvest days, 
And down the flaming valley ways, 
The foresters of time draw near. 

Through leagues of bloom I went with Spring, 
To call you on the slopes of morn, 
"Where in imperious song is borne 
The wild heart of the goldenwing. 

I roamed through alien summer lands, 
I sought your beauty near and far ; 
To-day, where russet shadows are, 
I hold your face between my hands. 

On runnels dark by slopes of fern. 
The hazy undern sleeps in sun. 
Remembrance and desire, undone, 
From old regret to dreams return. 

The apple harvest time is here. 
The tender apple harvest time; 
A sheltering calm, unknown at prime. 
Settles upon the brooding year. 

[The foregoing poems of Mr. Carman are printed by the cour- 
teous permission of Messrs. Small, Maynard and Company of Boston, 
and of Mr. Carman himself.] 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 389 



IN A GRAND PRE GARDEN 

BY BLISS CARMAN 

In a garden over Grand Pre, dewy in the morning sun, 
Here in earliest September with the summer nearly done, 
Musing on the lovely world and all its beauties one by one! 

Bluets, marigolds, and asters, scarlet poppies, purple phlox, 

Who knows where the key is hidden to those frail but perfect locks 

In the tacit doors of being where the soul stands still and knocks ? 

There is Blomidon's blue sea-wall, set to guard the turbid straits 
"Where the racing tides have entry, but who keeps for us the gates 
In the mighty range of silence, where man 's spirit calls and waits ? 

Where is Gooscaap? There's a legend of that saviour of the West, 
The benign one, whose all-wisdom loved beasts well, though men 

the best, 
Whom the tribes of Minas leaned on, and their villages had rest. 

Once the lodges were defenceless, all the warriors being gone 

On a hunting or adventure. Like a panther on a fawn 

On the helpless stole a war-band, ambushed to attack at dawn. 

But with night came Glooscaap. Sleeping he surprised them ; waved 

his bow: 
Through the summer leaves descended a great frost, as white as 

snow, 
Sealed their slumber to eternal peace and stillness long ago. 



He, too, when the mighty Beaver had the country for his pond, 
All the way from the Pereau here to Bass River and beyond, 
Stoned the rascal ; drained the Basin ; routed out that vagabond, 



390 KING'S COUNTY 

You can see yourself Five Islands Glooscaap flung at him that day, 
Where from Blomidon to Sharp he tore the Beaver's dam away, 
Cleared the channel, and the waters thundered out into the bay. 



Here he left us — see the orchards, red and gold in every tree ! — 
All the land from Gaspereau to Portapique and Cheverie, 
All the garden lands of Minas and a passage out to sea. 

You can watch the white-sailed vessels through the meadows wind 

and creep, 
All day long the pleasant sunshine, and at night the starry sleep, 
While the labouring tides that rest not have their business with the 

deep! 

So I get my myth and legend of a breaker-down of bars, 

Putting gateways in the mountains, with their thousand-year-old 

scars. 
That the daring and the dauntless might steer onward by the stars. 

4^ '^ # # # # 

First, how came my garden, where untimely not a leaf may wilt ? 
For a thousand years the currents trenched the rock and wheeled 

the silt. 
Dredged and filled and smoothed and levelled, toiling that it might 

be built. 

For the moon pulled and the sun pushed on the derrick of the tide ; 
And a great wind heaved and blustered, swang the weight round 

with a stride. 
Mining tons of red detritus out of the old mountain-side, — 

Bore them down and laid them even by the mouth of stream and rill 

For the quiet, lowly doorstep, for cemented joist and sill 

Of our Grand Pre, where the cattle lead their shadows or lie still. 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 391 

So my garden floor was founded by the labouring frugal sea, 
Deep and virginal as Eden, for the flowers that were to be, 
All for my great drowsy poppies and my marigolds and me. 

[The above selection is printed here by permission of Messrs. 
L. C. Page and Co. Boston, publishers, and of Mr. Carman himself.] 



A WILLOW AT GRAND PRE 

BV THEODORE HARDING BAND 

The fitful rustle of thy sea-green leaves 

Tells of the homeward tide, and free-blown air 

Upturns thy gleaming leafage like a share, — 

A silvery foam thy bosom, as it heaves ! 

O peasant tree, the regal Bay doth bare 

Its throbbing breast to ebbs and floods — and grieves! 

P slender fronds, pale as a moonbeam weaves, 

Joy woke your strain that trembles to despair! 

Willow of Normandy, say, do the birds 
Of Motherland plain on thy sea-chant low. 
Or voice of those who brought thee in the ships 
To tidal vales of Acadie? — Vain words! 
Grief unassuaged makes moan that Gaspereau 
Bore on its flood the fleet with iron lips ! 



PARTRIDGE ISLAND 

BY THEODORE HARDING RAND 

The title deeds of these rich shores are thine 
By age, — thine, too, by succour and defence ; 
Ere they were kist by winds, or waves beat thence, 
Thy breast of beauty broke the beating brine. 



392 KING'S COUNTY 

All hail, fair Isle, first born ! Thy jewelled shrine 
Is worn by pilgrim's feet, thy fir groves dense, 
Peopled with Hamadryads, cheat the sense 
With frolic fays and all the rosy Nine. 

These younglings — Gilbert's Cliff, and Sharp, and Split, 
Bold Silver Crag, the Islands Five, and Two, 
And broad-browed Blomidon — ^the Basin's Ben, — 
"When comes the witchery of fog- wreathed view, 
Each robed in richest hues, with curtsies fit, 
Sails in and out the circle of thy ken. 



BLOMIDON 

BY THEODORE HARDING RAND 

Whether o'erlaid with marble fogs like snows, 
Or wrapt in dewy ones like silver hair, 
Or chiseled naked in the vital air — 
Full-summed in purposeful repose ! 
The expectant stars lead on the ebbs and flows, 
And the unresting waters wash and wear 
The deep-set bases of thy presence there. 
To force the secret thy calm lips enclose. 

sleepless sentinel and from of old, 

1 guess thy mystery deep and consecrate, 
Yet open to the loving heart and bold — 
The shadow of God is laid upon thy sight. 
In his own mirror at thy feet, and straight 
Transfixes thee in vigil day and night ! 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 393 



THE BOWING DYKE 

BY THEODORE HARDING RAND 

Sea- widowed lands more fair than Tantramar! 

Winter's green providence in July's sun! 

The clattering steel, till all was over and done , 
Flashed on thy breast from dawn to evening star. 
Soon herds of sweet-breathed kine of sere Canard, 

Whose eager hoofs the hasting moon outrun, 

Sea of lush clover aftermath has won, 
And golden-girdled bees a-near and far. 

Lo, as the harvest moon comes up the sky, 
Her shield of argent mellowed to the rim. 
The phantom of the buried tide doth flow, 
And without noise of wave or sea-bird's cry, 
Fills all thy ancient channels to the brim, 
Thy levels of a thousand years ago ! 



GLOOSCAP 

BY THEODORE HARDING RAND 

Dim name, yet grand, that ever winks serene. 
In the red fagot's light, and like a ghost 
Hovers above these raucous tides, this coast. 

Wreathing weird webs of arrowy salts and keen! 

Under the black blue night's unrolled screen 
The loon is calling to the fiery host, 
And yet no answer comes to keep thy boast, — 

For years their mellow thunders roll between. 



394 KING'S COUNTY 

Divinest of the red man's race and name, 
Fulness of Hiawatha 's dawning day, 

Giver of laws, priest, prophet, all eonf est ! 
Thou 'It come again, appeased thy wrath and shame, 
Thy speed in all thy limbs, up yonder Bay, 
In white canoe from out the naked west. 



PURITAN PLANTERS 
A Ballad 

BY ARTHUR WENTWORTH HAMILTON EATON 

The rocky slopes for emerald had changed their garb of gray, 
When the vessels from Connecticut came sailing up the Bay, 
Light flashed from every crested wave that drew the strangers on, 
And sparkling sapphire swathed the brows of welcoming Blomidon. 

Five years in desolation the Acadian land had lain, 
Five golden harvest moons had wooed the fallow fields in vain, 
Five times the winter snows had slept and summer sunsets smiled 
On lonely clumps of willows and fruit trees growing wild. 

There was silence in the forest and along the Minas shore, 
And not a habitation from Canard to Beausejour, 
But many a blackened rafter and many a broken wall 
Told the story of Acadia's prosperity and fall; 

And even in Nature 's gladness, in the matchless month of June, 
"When every day she swept her harp and found the strings in tune, 
The land seemed calling wildly for its owners far away. 
The exiles scattered on the coast from Maine to Charleston Bay, 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 395 

"Where with heart-aehe and with hunger for their lost homes and 

their dead 
They sat in widowed silence and would not be comforted, 
And like their Jewish brothers, long ago beyond the sea, 
Refused to sing the songs of home in their captivity. 

But the simple Norman peasant-folk shall till the land no more, 
For the vessels from Connecticut have anchored by the shore, 
And many patient Puritan, his mind with Scripture stored. 
Rejoices he has found at last his ''garden of the Lord", 

There are families from Norwich, from Killingworth and Lyme, 
Gentle mothers, tender maidens, and strong men in their prime. 
There are lovers who have plighted sweet vows in Coventry, 
And tender, trusting children, born in Newport by the sea. 

They come as came the Hebrews into their "promised land", 
Not as to rugged Plymouth shores came first the Pilgrim band; 
The Minas fields were fruitful, and the Gaspereau had borne 
To seaward many a vessel freighted deep with golden corn. 

They come with conquering vision, but with words direct and cold, 
To found a race of noblemen, fine-fibred sturdy, bold, — 
A race of earnest people, who in mellower times shall reach 
The heights of wider knowledge, and the plains of gentler speech. 

They come as Puritans, but who shall say their hearts are blind 

To the subtle charms of Nature, and the love of Humankind? 

The rigorous New England creeds have shaped their thought, 'tis 

true, 
But human creeds can ne'er completely heaven's mould undo, 

And tears fall fast from many an eye, long time unused to weep, 
For in the fields they see the bones, all bleached, of cows and sheep, — 
The faithful cows that used to feed upon the fair Grand Pre, 
And with their tinkling bells come slowly home at close of day ; 



396 KING'S COUNTY 

And where the Acadian village stood, its roofs o 'ergrown with moss. 
And the simple wooden chapel, with its altar and its cross, 
And where the forge of Basil sent its sparks toward the sky, 
They see the purple thistle and the pink fireweed grown high. 



The broken dykes have been rebuilt a century and more, 
The cornfields stretch their furrows from Canard to Beausejour, 
Five generations have been reared beside the broad Grand Pre, 
Since the vessels from Connecticut came sailing up the Bay ; 



And now across the meadows, while the farmers reap and sow. 
The engine shrieks its disc<3rds to the hills of Gaspereau, 
And ever onward to the sea the restless Fundy tide 
Bears playful pleasure yachts and busy trade ships, side by side y 



And the Puritan has yielded to the softening touch of time, 
Like him who still content remained in Killingworth and Lyme, 
And graceful homes of prosperous men adorn the landscape rare. 
And mellow creeds and ways of life are rooted everywhere ; 



And churches nestle lovingly on many a glad hillside. 

And holy bells ring out their music in the eventide ; — 

But here and there on untilled ground, apart from glebe or town, 

A lone surviving apple tree stands blossomless and brown. 



And many a traveller has seen in summer as he strayed 
Some long-forgotten cellar, digged on dyke or pasture-glade : 
And in such decrepit symbols, as in groups of willows green, 
Has found the Acadian tragedy, and fair Evangeline. 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 397 

ORCHAKDS IN BLOOM 

BY ARTHUR WENTWORTH HAMILTON EATON 

Banks of bloom on a billowy plain, 
Odours of orient in the air, 
Pink-tipped petals that fall like rain — 
Allah 's garden, everywhere ! 

Boundless depths in the blue above. 

Glint of gold on the hill-tops gray, 
Orioles trilling songs of love 

"With tireless throats, the long June day. 

Fields of emerald, tufted white, 

Yellow, and azure, far outspread, — 
the measureless soul delight 

In the scent of the clover blossoms red ! 

Youth in the veins of the earth and the sky, 
Brimming joy in the beams of the sun, — 

Never a hint that by and by 

Fields shall be ripe and springtime done; 

Never a hint that these orchards wide. 
Where rose-tints riot and perfumes burn, 

In the mellow march of summertide 
To dark, unscented woods shall turn. 

Sweet to the sense it is to sip 

Fresh from the bowl of the blossoming year. 
Maddening joy once more to dip 

Deep in the orchard-nectars here, — 



398 KING'S COUNTY 

Banks of bloom on a billowy plain, 

Odours of orient in the air, 
Pink-tipped petals that fall like rain, 
Joyance, joyance everywhere ! 



KING'S COUNTY AUTHORS 

I 

A list, no doubt incomplete, of writers of King 's County birth or 
origin or who have been long associated with the county, is as 
follows : 

John Edmund Barss, has written poems. 

William Bayard, M. D., born in Kentville in 1814, wrote probably on 
medical subjects. 

Rev. Ingraham Ebenezer Bill, D. D., wrote a History of the Baptists. 

Mrs. "William Belcher (nee Shaw) has written a good deal of verse. 

Professor Avard Longley Bishop, of Yale University has written 
much. 

Miss Blanche M. Bishop has written graceful poems, three of which 
appear in the * ' Treasury of Canadian Verse ' '. 

John Leander Bishop, M. D., wrote poems and published Govern- 
ment Reports, 

Edward Blackadder, M. D,, wrote "Fancies of Boyhood", "Poems 
and Sonnets"; Economies of Prohibition", 

Harris Harding Bligh, K, C, D. C, L., Librarian of the Supreme 
Court of Canada, is the editor of "Consolidated Orders of Coun- 
cil in Canada"; and complier of "Dominion Law Index, &c., &c. 

Mrs. Lillian Ellis Charlton has written poems. 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 399 

Rev. Alfred Chipman, M. A., at present the oldest living graduate of 
Acadia University, has written more or less. 

Mrs. Alice Shaw Chipman, wife of Rev. Alfred Chipman, has written 
poems. 

Professor Albert E. Coldwell, M. A., has published a "History of 
Acadia University", &c. 

Rev. John Mockett Cramp, D. D., some time president of Acadia Uni- 
versity, was the author of a long list of books and pamphlets, 
which will be found in Allibone's Dictionary of Authors. 

Rev. Professor Harold Sidney Davidson (Presbyterian), Lecturer in 
Semitic Languages at Columbia University, New York is the 
author of learned books on Semitic languages. 

Leslie Loring Davison, who died young, wrote poems of much beau- 
ty, which after his death were collected and published in a small 
volume. 

Rev. Austen Kennedy de Blois, D. D., of Chicago, has written on re- 
ligious and political subjects. 

Professor James De Mille, born in St. John, N. B., in 1837, graduated 
from Brown University, and was Professor of Classics in Acadia 
College from 1860 to '65. Next to Judge Haliburton Professor 
DeMille is the most important writer of fiction the Maritime 
Provinces have produced. Besides his ''B. O. W. C." and 
''Boys of Grand Pre School", commemorating the Horton in- 
stitutions of learning, he wrote: "Helena's Household", "The 
Martyr of the Catacombs", "Andy O'Hara", "John Wheeler's 
Two Uncles", "The Soldier and the Spy", "The Arkansas 
Ranger", "The Dodge Club", "Cord and Crease", "The 
American Baron", "The Lady of the Ice", "Lost in the Fog", 
"The Cryptogram", "Fire in the Woods", "Picked up Adrift", 
"Seven Hills", "A Comedy of Terrors", "An Open Question", 
"The Treasures of the Seas", "Babes in the Wood", "The 
Living Link", "Old Garth, a Story of Sicily", and "A Castle 
in Spain". 



400 KING'S COUNTY 

Professor Adoniram Judson Eaton, Ph. D., of McGill University, has 

written German text books. 
Rev. Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton, D. C. L., clergyman of the 

Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States. A list of his 

chief writings will be found elsewhere in this book. 
Brenton Halliburton Eaton, D. C. L., has written for publication. 
Rev. Charles Aubrey Eaton, D. D., minister of an important church 

in New York City, although born in Cumberland County, is of 

the King 's County family ; he has written much on religious and 

political topics. 
Frank Herbert Eaton, D. C. L,, a clear and forcible writer, left, how- 
ever, only a text book or two, and a valuable article in the 

Popular Science Monthly magazine, which is in part reproduced 

in an earlier chapter of this book. 
Mrs. J. Everett Eaton (nee Bentley) has written poems. 
Rev. Samuel Elder wrote poems. 
Professor "William Elder, D. Sc, wrote on literary and scientific 

subjects. 
Robert Wheelock Ells, LL.D., F. R. S. C, of the Canadian Geological 

Survey at Ottawa, is the author of valuable writings on geology. 
Rev. John Alfred Faulkner, D. D., Professor of Historical Theology 

in Drew (Methodist) Seminary, at Madison, N. J., has written 

valuable theological works. 
Miss M. Amelia Fitch has written ''The Rival Forts, or the Velvet 

Siege of Beausejour", and other stories and journalistic articles. 

Her first book, "Kerchiefs to Hunt Souls", was published in 

1895. 
Abram Gesner, M. D., F. G. S., distinguished naturalist, was a prolific 

writer on scientific subjects. His works will be found in all 

libraries. 
John Frederic Herbin, M. A., has written "the Marshlands" 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 401 

(poems) ; "History of Grand Pre", "The Heir of Grand Pre" 
(a novel). 

James Edgar Higgins, M. Sc, a resident in Honolulu, where he is 
Government Horticulturist for Hawaii, is the author of learned 
works on horticulture. 

Eev. Thomas A. Higgins, D. D., wrote a "Life of Rev. John Mockett 
Cramp, D. D." 

Rt. Rev, Charles Inglis, D. D., first Anglican Bishop of Nova Scotia, 
was the author of pamphlets, a list of most of which will be 
given under his life in the Genealogies in this book. 

Rev. Arthur John Lockhart ("Pastor Felix"), in 1877 published 
"The Masque of Minstrels", which contained his own earlier 
poems and those of his brother. Rev. Burton Wellesley Lock- 
hart, D. D. In 1895 he published a smaller collection of verse 
entitled, "Beside the Narraguagus, and Other Poems"; and in 
1910, "The Birds of the Cross, and Other Poems", He is 
also the author of a volume of miscellanies in prose and verse, 
entitled, "The Papers of Pastor Felix", issued in 1903. A poem 
of Dr. Burton Wellesley Lockhart 's entitled "Beside the Gas- 
pereau", which will be found in "The Treasury of Canadian 
Verse", has been reproduced in this chapter. 

Vernon Freeman Masters, of Lima, Peru, has written a number of 
geological works in Spanish for the Peruvian Government. 

Mrs. Irene Elder Morton is one of the best known writers of verse the 
county has produced. 

Rev. James Ferdinand Morton, M. A., Principal of Proctor Academy, 
and Superintendent of Schools, at Andover, N. H., has written 
on religious topics. 

Professor Simon Newcomb, LL. D., D. C. L., etc., etc., the great 
geologist, though born in Wallace, Cumberland County, was of 
the King's County Newcomb family. A bibliography of his 
writings, which were very numerous, was made in 1905 by his 
relative, Professor R. C. Archibald of Brown University, who 



402 KING'S COUNTY 

through his mother is also descended from the Cornwallis New- 
comb family and is himself an author. At the time of Dr. Si- 
mon Newcomb's death most of the leading newspapers of the 
civilized world paid him tributes like the following : 

' ' Not only the United States but the world suffers a loss in the 
death of Simon Newcomb. There are few men of science who have 
attained his sumpremacy ; fewer still whose work has been so widely 
accepted as to its permanent and popular value. He began his 
career at Cambridge; he carried it on to its finish as the supreme 
scientific authority at Washington, representing in that capacity 
the fullest development of research, more especially in his 
chosen domain of astronomy, that the century has known. His pub- 
lished works are classic and authoritative; his technical memoirs 
form a vast contribution to human knowledge ; his nautical almanac 
became the guidance of the shipping of the world; his general 
works form the standard of educational institutions here and 
abroad. He was a prophet of natural, universal law, and his works 
will live after him, illuminative, forceful, practical". 

Rev. David 0. Parker was the author of pamphlets and other fugitive 
writings. 

Albert J. Pineo, of Victoria, B. C, "Science Master in Victoria Col- 
lege", and acting minister of the Unitarian Church in Van- 
couver, B. C, has written more or less. 

Benjamin Rand, M. A., Ph. D., librarian of Philosophy in Harvard 
University, has produced bibliographies and histories of Philos- 
phy that have given him a place among the most eminent 
scholars of the modern world. His works are "Economic His- 
tory Since 1763", "Bibliography of Economics", "Life, Un- 
published Letters, and Philosophical Regimen of the Third Lord 
Shaftesbury", "Bibliography of Philosophy", "Modern Classi- 
cal Philosophers", "The Classical Moralists". 

Emeline (Eaton) Rand, wife of Theodore Harding Rand, D. C. L., 
has written ' ' Notes of Pictures and Painters ' '. 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 403 

Henry Walter Rand, M. Dy of Brooklyn, N. Y., was a frequent con- 
tributor to medical journals. 

Rev. Silas Tertius Rand, D. D., D. C. L., of whom a sketch will be 
found in the Personal Sketches in this book, wrote a large num- 
ber of valuable works, chiefly on the language and legends of the 
Miemaes. The list will be found in the introduction to his "Mic- 
mac Legends". 

Theodore Harding Rand, D. C. L,, wrote, "At Minas Basin and 
other Poems", and compiled a valuable "Treasury of Canadian 
Verse". Of Dr. Rand, Rev. Arthur John Lockhart says : "His 
genius flowered late, but in the publication of his 'At Minas 
Basin and Other Poems' he discovered a rich poetical vein, par- 
ticularly in his sonnets, which passed into a second edition. 
He was an enthusiast on our native literature, and his desire to 
promote it induced his compilation of his anthology, 'A Treas- 
ury of Canadian Verse', published not long before his sudden 
death. The posthumous publication of his Song Wave with a 
fine portrait enhanced his poetical reputation. King's County 
has produced no more gifted son, and no nobler, purer personali- 
ty, than he ' '. 

Rev. Eliphalet Allison Read, Professor in Chicago University, has 
achieved authorship in the theological realm. 

Miss Helen Leah Reed, of Boston, Mass., a well known writer, though 
born in St. John, N. B., is descended from the Horton Reid 
family. Her first published work was a metrical translation of 
an ode of Horace, published in Scribner's Magazine. Her firs^ 
venture in fiction was published first in the New England 
Magazine in 1895, then in book form. Her books since that 
time comprise the "Brenda" Stories four, volumes, two volumes 
in the "Irma" series, and "Napoleon's Young Neighbor", an 
interesting historical sketch. 

Rev. Melbourne Stewart Reed, Professor in Colgate University, has 
written on theological topics. 

Rev. Edward Manning Saunders, D. D., a well known clergyman of 
Nova Scotia, and one of the ablest historians of the province, 



404 KING'S COUNTY 

has produced a valuable "History of the Baptists of the Mari- 
time Provinces", "Three Premiers of Nova Scotia (Hon. Judge 
James William Johnstone, Hon. Joseph Howe and Et. Hon. Sir 
Charles Tupper, Bart.) ; "Life of Rev. John Wiswall", and 
many valuable historical monographs. 

Miss Margaret Marshall Saunders, although born in Milton, Queen's 
County, is the daughter of the Rev. Edward Manning Saunders, 
D. D., who was born in King's. She is widely known as the 
author of "Beautiful Joe", "Beautiful Joe's Paradise", "The 
Story of Gravelys ", " Rose a ' Charlitte ' ', and ten other volumes. 

Everett W. Sawyer, M. A., President of Okanagan College, Sum- 
merland, British Columbia, has written more or less. 

Rev. Avery A. Shaw, D. D., minister of a Baptist Church in Van- 
couver, B. C, has achieved authorship in the religious sphere. 

Frederick Ratchford Starr, of "Echo Farm", Litchfield, Conn., wrote 
several volumes. 

Rev. Reginald Heber Starr, D. D., clergyman of the Protestant Epis- 
copal Church, has written one or two volumes on theological 
topics. 

Harold Freeman Tufts, has written articles on the birds of King's 
County, in the Ottawa Naturalist ; also some ' ' Nature Studies ' '. 

Clement Leslie Vaughan, who studied in Leipzig and Berlin, and is 
Professor of Psychology and Philosophy in Princeton Universi- 
ty, has written text books in German on Psychology and Philoso- 
phy. 

Rev. 0. S. C. Wallace, D. D., of Baltimore, Maryland, is the author 
of several works. 

Lady Weatherbe has written beautiful verse and excellent prose. 

Professor Daniel M. Welton, Ph. D., Leipzig, who died in 1803, wrote 
more or less. 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 405 

Interesting manuscript diaries and other writings of Mr. Iland- 
ley Chipman, the founder of the Chipman family in King's County, 
exist in various quarters, chiefly among his descendants. A manu- 
script diary of Miss Mary Ann Norris, of much local interest, begin- 
ning August 5, 1818, and ending Dec. 2, 1836, has been deposited in 
the library of the Nova Scotia Historical Society at Halifax, and 
may be seen there. 



NEWSPAPERS 

The libraries of the early planters of Cornwallis and Horton 
must have been pitifully small, and with the exception of a few 
Bibles and Watts' hymn-books few if any of their books have 
lasted to the present day. Of newspapers, it is probable they occa- 
sionally received one from New England, or from England, but 
it is likely that all the newspapers many of them saw were the 
small newspapers printed in Halifax. 

The first Nova Scotia newspaper, and indeed the first news- 
paper published in what is now the Dominion of Canada, was the 
Halifax Gazette, the maiden issue of which appeared on Monday, 
March 23, 1752. Its earliest size was that of a half sheet of foolscap. 
There was a wood-cut at each end of the title, the one at the right 
representing a fowler pursuing game, the one at the left a ship 
under full sail. The editor and printer was John Bushell, formerly 
of Boston, Mass. In September, 1760, Bushell took into partnership 
with him a young German, Anthony Henry, who for the next forty 
years, with a brief interruption, published the Gazette. This inter- 
ruption covered a period of four years, from August 1766, to Sep- 
tember 1770. During this period the newspaper was published by 
Robert Fletcher. In 1769, Henry began the Nova Scotia Chronicle 
and Weekly Advertiser, a small-sized eight page paper, but on the 
4th of September, 1770, he resumed the publication of the 
Gazette, incorporating with it the paper he had started a year and 



406 KING'S COUNTY 

eight months before. The name of the newspaper now became The 
Nova Scotia Gazette and Weekly Chronicle. The next Nova Scotia 
newspaper was the Halifax Journal, begun in January, 1781, and 
published regularly in Halifax until about 1870. Its founder was 
John Howe, father of the Hon. Joseph Howe, in the possession of 
whose family it remained until 1819, when it was sold to John 
Munro. The last named man continued to publish the paper until 
1850, when he sold it to William Penny. For about fourteen years 
after Mr. Howe began to publish the Journal, he seems to have con- 
tinued the publication of the Gazette also, reducing the name of 
the latter newspaper, however, again simply to the Gazette. In 
May, 1786, William Minns, a young brother-in-law of John Howe, 
started a newspaper, which he named the Journal, and thereafter, 
as the late Mr. J. J. Stewart of Halifax says, for a quarter of a 
century this trio of papers, the Gazette, the Journal, and the Weekly 
Chronicle, continued to supply the demand for journalism that exist- 
ed in eastern Nova Scotia. In 1813 Anthony Henry Holland found- 
ed the Acadian Recorder, and in 1816 Edmund Ward established 
the Free Press. 



The following newspapers have been printed in King's 
County since 1859, when journalism in the county began. For 
the list we are indebted to a very accurate and detailed article by 
the veteran newspaper editor of the county, Mr. John E. Wood- 
worth, of the Berwick Register, published in a magazine called the 
Suburban, which was for a time issued at Rockingham, near 
Halifax. The article in question appeared in this magazine, March 
26, 1904. 



A SMALL SHEET, only a few issues of which (perhaps not 
more than a prospectus) appeared; published in Wolfville 
about 1859, by Campbell Stevens (who almost immediately 
after, began the publication of the Avon Herald, at Windsor). 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 407 

II THE KING'S COUNTY GAZETTE, published in Canning 
by H. A. Borden, 1864- '65; by Major Theakston, 1865 to 
August, '66. 

III THE ACADIAN, published in Wolfville, by Messrs. Major 
and William Theakston, from 1866 to the autumn of '69, 

IV THE STAR, published in Berwick, first by James A. Halli- 
day and H. E. Jefferson, 1866- '68; then in Kentville by 
James A. Halliday, 1868- '73; then in Berwick by the same, 
1873- '79; then in Wolfville, successively by Walter L. Barss, 
Charles W. KJuowles, and A. J. Steele, from 1879 to perhaps 
1880 or '81. 

V THE WESTERN CHRONICLE, published in Kentville by 
Joseph Allison Cogswell as editor, first under the ownership 
of a body of young business men, then under the ownership 
of Joseph Allison Cogswell, 1873- '79; then under the own- 
ership and editorial management of George W. Woodworth, 
assisted by Elihu Woodworth, 1879- '83, by James Stewart; 
1883- '85, by John Bryenton, 1885- '87 (and by John E. Wood- 
worth from 1886) ; managed by John Bryenton, but still 
owned by George W. Woodworth, from 1887 to March, '90; 
leased for one year to John E. Woodworth, March, 1890, to 
Feb. 1, '91; purchased by a body of prominent Liberal- 
Conservatives under the name of "R. C. Dickey & Co." as 
a party organ, Feb. 1, 1891, and Charles F. Rockwell made 
manager, and W. P. Scott, chief editor ; managed and edited 
successively by George S. Hutchinson, P. F. Lawson, H. 
Percy Borden ; owned and edited by Frederick W. Wickwire 
from 1898 tjo the present time. 

VI THE ACADIA ATHENAEUM, published monthly during 
the college year by the students of Acadia University, Wolf- 
ville, from 1874 to the present time. "The list of its editors 
during the years of its existence comprises the names of 



408 KING'S COUNTY 

many persons who have attained celebrity, among whom 
might be mentioned Dr. Jacob G. Schurman, now President 
of Cornell University ". 

VII THE WATCHMAN, an organ of the Sons of Temperance of 
Nova Scotia, published from the office of the Western 
Chronicle for one year, about 1879. 

VIII THE FARMER'S MANUAL, a fortnightly, published in 
Kentville for a short time, in 1880, by George W. Woodworth. 

IX THE YOUNG ACADIAN, published in Wolfville by Arthur 
S. Davison (who died deeply regretted in January, 1899) 
and his brother, B. 0. Davison, from April, 1883, to the 
present time. Shortly after it began, however, its name was 
shortened to The Acadian, the name it now bears. 

X THE NEW STAR, owned and published in Wolfville by 
Adoniram Judson Pineo, about 1884- '85 ; in Kentville by A. 
J. Pineo and James Stewart (later by Mr. Stewart alone), 
1885- '92; acquired by Dr. Frank Herbert Eaton, 1892, who 
at once changed its name to The Advertiser. 

XI THE FARM JOURNAL, really published in Pictou, but 
dated and ostensibly published at Berwick, by A. J. Pineo, 
and edited by Miss Aimee Huntington, for about a year, in 
1888. When it was discontinued its owner started in Pictou 
a paper called The Berwick News, the good-will of which was 
bought by John E. Woodworth in 1891. 

XII THE CANNING GAZETTE, edited for three months, in 1888, 
by Alexander M. Liddell, dated at Canning, but printed at 
the office of the Western Chronicle; then amalgamated with 
the Western Chronicle, the Saturday issue of which paper 
continued the name, — 1888 to the present time. 



LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 409 

XIII THE ADVERTISER, owned and published in Kentville by 
Dr. Frank Herbert Eaton, 1892 until August 1897; man- 
aged for a short time by Rufus William Eaton, then sold 
to Howard George Harris, who is still its owner and editor. 

XIY THE ACADIAN ORCHARDIST, published in Kentville but 
dated at Wolfville, as the Tuesday's issue of the Advertiser, 
by Dr. Frank Herbert Eaton, from 1892 until August, 1897 ; 
this also sold to Howard George Harris, who still conducts 
it. 

XY THE AYLESFORD UNION, ''a monthly journal devoted to 

the interests of young people's societies in Western King's", 

published by the Rev. John B. Morgan, pastor of the Ayles- 

ford Baptist Church, 1897- '99. During the first year this 

paper was printed in the office of the Berwick Register, 

during the second, in that of the Middleton (Annapolis Co.) 

Outlook. 
» 

XVI THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, "an illustrated literary 
weekly, which appeared for about two months in 1898", 
published by Frederick C. MuUoney, and printed at the 
office of the Advertiser. 

XVII THE WEDGE, at first a weekly, then a semi-weekly, pub- 
lished by George W. Woodworth, in Kentville, from 1898 to 
1901 ; then for a short time by Messrs. N. A. and S. D. Wood- 
worth, sons of George W. Woodworth. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

POLITICS, REPRESENTATIVES TO THE 
LEGISLATURE 

Nine years after the establishment of civil government in Nova 
Scotia a Eepresentative Assembly was formed. This first Assembly 
met for the first time on the 2nd of October, 1758, and was dissolved 
on the 13th of August of the next year. The third Assembly met 
for the first time July 1, 1761, and as King's County was now 
settled, the county at large and the three townships of Horton, 
Cornwallis, and Falmouth, were represented, as the Council in 1759 
had prescribed, by two members each. Of the first representatives 
from King's in the Provincial Assembly we have no reason to be 
ashamed. Col. Robert Denison of Horton, Dr. Samuel Willoughby 
of Cornwallis, Lebbeus Harris, Captain Stephen West, and three or 
four men of even greater prominence, if not of greater worth, than 
they, were men that the county could well afford to make its repre- 
sentatives in a dignified legislative body. Following these, in the 
early years of the New England settlement of the county, came 
such persons as Dr. "William Baxter, Col. John Burbidge, Jonathan 
Crane, Charles Dickson, and John Wells, all gentlemen of the 
highest intelligence, and well fitted to do their part towards gov- 
erning the province that had become their permanent home. 

Writing of the Assembly as it was in 1789- '90, Murdoch says: 
"In our legislative body, much talent had been displayed. The 
flowing sentences and racy humour of Uniaeke, the elegance, astute- 
ness, and vigor of Barclay, the earnest and skilled arguments of 
Isaac Wilkins and Colonel Millidge, and the ready powers of debate 
evinced by Charles Hill, Pyke, Crane, Freke Bulkeley, and others, 
gave to the House of Representatives a weight and charm that has 



POLITICS 411 

only twice or thrice been repeated in succeeding years. Crane 
I can remember as he appeared in the House twenty years later, a 
tall, handsome man, with fluent speech and an amazing readiness of 
natural wit and illustrative power". 

"In reading over the reports of the debates in the house at 
this time (1819)", Murdoch again says, "I feel bound to notice 
the talent displayed by many of the members. Although educational 
establishments had as yet effected little for the people, yet in 1819 
men like Ritchie, Robie, Haliburton, and Archibald (natives of the 
Province) exhibited statesmanlike ideas, a power of subtle reason- 
ing, and much eloquence. There was also at this period a tone of 
independence, which gave dignity to the representatives of a free, 
though not a numerous or wealthy people. William Allen Chipman 
from King's, Shubael Dimock from Hants, and "William Lawson 
from Halifax, though not remarkable for oratory, were conspicuous 
for good sense, firmness, and a readiness to defend the public 
interests". 

In the address of the Governor, Lord Dalhousie, at the opening 
of the first session of the eleventh Assembly, which convened in 
1819, his Lordship spoke of the absence of party faction "in this 
happy country", and while differences of opinion of course often 
arose in the Assembly and heated debates took place on questions 
affecting the public welfare, it may fairly be said that until 1830, 
when the struggle for responsible government began. Nova Scotia 
politics were free from excessive partizanship. The history of the 
struggle for responsible government in Canada is far too well 
known and our space is too limited for us to go into the details of 
it here. From the autocratic power exercised by the Governor and 
Council in the main interests of legislation, especially in the dis- 
tribution of offices and the apportionment of salaries, the people at 
large were allowed to have nothing whatever to say. When the 
Loyalists poured into the province in 1783, and thrust their domi- 
nating personalities into public affairs, the exclusive spirit of the 
governing body was naturally strengthened, and at last a system of 
favouritism and of exclusive privilege grew up at Halifax that gave 



412 KING'S COUNTY 

continual annoyance to the independent people of the scattered 
country districts and smaller towns. At last a strong popular leader 
arose, in the person of Joseph Howe, and from the election of 1830, 
when a majority of the members returned were in favour of destroy- 
ing the ancient privilege of the Governor and Council, until 1840, 
when the whole ''intrenched system of irresponsibility and favour- 
itism" was swept away, there was persistent clashing between a 
Liberal majority and a Tory minority, even in the Lower House. 

Shortly after Mr, Howe had succeeded in gaining for the Nova 
Scotia electorate complete governmental control, he had an unfor- 
tunate business quarrel with Mr. John Ferguson, editor and pro- 
prietor of the Christian Messenger, long the Baptist denominational 
organ in the Maritime Provinces. This quarrel the whole Baptist 
body took up, and from that moment, in spite of the invaluable 
service he had done the province, Mr. Howe's popularity among a 
large part of the people of King's, as of other counties, was forever 
at an end. Among the wise measures this really great leader 
strongly advocated was direct taxation for a system of free schools. 
This measure increased his unpopularity with the voters, but his 
greatest offence in the eyes of a large number of the people of 
King's was his opposition to sectarian colleges. Already, including 
the Methodist college across the New Brunswick border, five colleges 
had come into being in Nova Scotia. In no measure he ever advo- 
cated does Mr. Howe's wisdom show itself more plainly than in his 
"persistent antagonism to this inefficient and wasteful educational 
policy, but the various denominations, intrenched in sectarianism, 
rose in arms against his plan of a strong central college in place of 
a scattered group of weak ones, and Mr. Howe's larger policy was 
wholly defeated. 

Among the Baptists of King's, and other counties where this 
religious body was strong, the greatest bitterness against Mr. Howe 
from this time prevailed, Acadia College had recently come into 
existence and its founders were zealously trying to build up and 
give permanence to their beloved institution. Mr. Howe's chief 
opponent in the legislature, Mr. James William Johnstone, moreover, 



POLITICS 413 

was one of themselves, and the consequence was that a bitter parti- 
zanship now came into Nova Scotia politics that has characterized 
every election and has found expression in every corner of the 
province, in every year since. Later, Dr. Charles Tupper, now Sir 
Charles Tupper, Bart., became the conservative leader and Mr. 
Howe's opponent, and although this able statesman drew up and 
adopted for his party "a more progressive and more liberal policy 
than the Hon, Mr. Johnstone had advocated", he was able to keep the 
Baptists of King's loyal to the conservative party, and in a large 
measure to satisfy their views. In 1864 Sir Charles was able, though 
not without opposition in his own party, to carry into effect in 
Nova Scotia a wisely framed Free School Act, the most important 
measure that had come before the province since the reduction of 
the power of the old Council of Twelve ; in 1867 to lead Nova Scotia 
into Confederation; and in 1865, '66, and '67, to carry into opera- 
tion the Windsor and Annapolis Railway Act. How loudly the 
various members for King's lifted their voices in the Assembly on 
these momentous questions, and precisely how individual members 
voted, it is not necessary for us now to try to discover. 

The confederation of the provinces introduced entirely new 
issues into Nova Scotia politics. "With the Conservatives, under 
Sir Charles Tupper, arose a new system of protection, which became 
known as the ''National Policy". This system of protection the 
Liberal party stoutly opposed, contending that free trade or 
reciprocity was the country's greatest wisdom. Finally, however, 
bowing to the weight of a fairly general public opinion, they adopted 
as their platform a moderate system of protection, since when the 
main issue in elections has been chiefly the character of opposing 
candidates for popular votes. The confederation of the provinces 
was effected July 1, 1867, and the first representative from King's to 
the Dominion House of Commons was William Henry Chipman, Esq., 
Conservative, who died suddenly at Ottawa in 1870. To fill his 
place his son, Col. Leverett de Veber Chipman, was by acclamation 
at once elected, but at the second election, in 1872, a Liberal candi- 
date, John Leander Wickwire, Esq., was the representative chosen. 



414 



KING'S COUNTY 



At the next election, in 1874, also, the Liberal party won the day, 
the candidate now elected being Hon, Sir Frederick Borden, 
K, C. M. G., who was, however, defeated by Douglas B. "Woodworth, 
the Conservative candidate, in 1882. Until 1887, Mr. Woodworth 
represented the county, but in that year a new election was held, in 
which Sir Frederick Borden was again chosen. From that time to 
the present Sir Frederick has been the county's representative in 
the Dominion House. On the formation of the Laurier administra- 
tion, in 1896, Sir Frederick Borden was called to the Cabinet as 
Minister of Militia and Defence, and this distinguished position he 
has held ever since. 



REPRESENTATIVES TO THE LEGISLATURE 

THIRD ASSEMBLY, 1761-1765 



County of King's 



Col. Robert Denison 



Charles Morris, Jr. 



Town of Horton 



William Welch 
Lebbeus Harris 



Town of Cornwallis 



Dr. Samuel Willoughby 
Capt. Stephen West 



Town of West Falmouth 



Col. Henry Denny Denson 
Isaac Deschamps 



POLITICS 



415 



County of King's 



Town of Horton 
Town of Cornwallis 
Town of Falmouth 
Town of Newport 



FOURTH ASSEMBLY, 1765-1770 

Winckworth Tonge 

Charles Morris, Jr. 
William Welch 
John Burbidge 
Isaac Deschamps 
John Day 



At the opening of the sixth session of this Assembly, in June, 
1768, Charles Dickson, Esq., took his seat for Horton. Whether Mr. 
Welch had died or not we do not know. 



FIFTH ASSEMBLY, 1770-1785 

Winckworth Tonge 



County of King's 

Town of Horton 
Town of Cornwallis 
Town of Falmouth 
Town of Newport 



Henry Denny Denson 

Charles Dickson 

Dr. Samuel Willoughby 

Edward York 

Isaac Deschamps 



This assembly did not dissolve until 1785; it was Nova Scotia's 
'Long Parliament". In 1776 the representatives were: 



416 KING'S COUNTY 

Henry Denny Denson 
County of King's 

Winckworth Tonge 

Town of Horton Charles Dickson 

Town of Cornwallis Dr. Samuel Willoughby 

Town of Falmouth Jeremiah Northrup 

Town of Newport Isaac Deschamps 

June 28, 1776, the seats of Dr. Willoughby and Charles Dickson 
were declared vacant for non-attendance. In place of these mem- 
bers were elected, John Chipman for Cornwallis, Joseph Pierce for 
Horton. June 25, 1778, on account of age and infirmities Joseph 
Pierce resigned his seat. During the 16th session of the 5th Assem- 
bly, which began on Monday, October 6, 1783, the seat of Winck- 
worth Tonge, member for King's County, was declared vacated for 
non-attendance. Also, the seat of Isaac Deschamps, member for the 
Town of Newport. This Assembly lasted over fourteen years and 
had seventeen sessions. Early in the last session Jonathan Crane 
was sworn in for King's County, and Joshua Sanford was returned 
for the Town of Newport. 

SIXTH ASSEMBLY, 1785-1793 

Jonathan Crane 
County of King's 

Elisha Lawrence 

Town of Horton Gurden Denison 

Town of Cornwallis Benjamin Belcher 



POLITICS 417 

In 1781 the County of Hants had been created ; after this time, 
therefore, Falmouth and Newport drop out of our list. In April, 
1789, "it was resolved that if Elisha Lawrence, member for King's 
County, do not return before next session is proclaimed, a writ is 
to issue to fill up his seat". In 1793 the Septennial bill became law. 

SEVENTH ASSEMBLY, 1793-1799 

Jonathan Crane 
County of King's 

Elisha DeWolf 

Town of Horton Samuel Leonard 

Town of Cornwallis Dr. William Baxter 

Shortly after the election, however, "Mr. Crane was declared 
unduly returned, and Mr. Benjamin Belcher obtained the seat for 
King's County". 

EIGHTH ASSEMBLY, 1799-1806 

Jonathan Crane 
County of King's 

William Allen Chipman 

Town of Horton Joseph Allison 

Town of Cornwallis Lemuel Morton 

NINTH ASSEMBLY, 1806-1812 

Jonathan Crane 
County of King's 

John Wells 



418 KING'S COUNTY 

Town of Horton Daniel DeWolf 

Town of Cornwallis Lemuel Morton 

TENTH ASSEMBLY, 1812-1818 

Jonathan Crane 
County of King's 

John Wells 

Town of Horton Samuel Bishop 

Town of Cornwallis "William Allen Chipman 

The Halifax Gazette records that '*on Thursday, the 12th of 
September (1811), a Poll was opened at the Presbyterian meeting 
house in Cornwallis, for the election of one member for the said 
township, to serve in the General Assembly of the Province. The 
Poll was opened at 11 o'clock, A. M. Candidates, William A, 
Chipman, Esq., and Dr. William Baxter. At 12 o'clock the same 
day, Doctor Baxter declined standing the Poll, and William A. 
Chipman, Esq., was declared duly elected. On Wednesday, the 25th 
of September, a Poll for the election of two members for King's. 
County, and one member for the township of Horton, to serve ia 
the General Assembly of the Province, was opened at the County 
Court House. Candidates for the county: Jonathan Crane, John 
Wells, and Jared Ingersoll Chipman, Esquires, and Mr. David 
Borden; for the township of Horton, Samuel Bishop, Esq., solus. 
The Poll was opened at 11 o'clock, A. M., and at one o'clock of the 
same day Samuel Bishop, Esquire, was declared duly elected for 
the township of Horton". The score for three successive days is 
then given. On the third day Crane stood 257, Wells 262, Chipman 
298, Borden 297. The Poll was now removed to Parrsborough. In 
the end Crane stood 342, Wells 339, Chipman 309, Borden 306;: 
accordingly Crane and Wells were declared elected. 



POLITICS ,.4>19 

ELEVENTH ASSEMBLY, 1818-1820 

William Allen Chipman 
County of King's 

Elisha Dewolf 

Town of Horton Jonathan Crane 

Town of Cornwallis Charles Ramage Preseott 

[In 1825 Mr. Preseott was given a seat in H. M. Council] 

TWELFTH ASSEMBLY, 1820-1827 

William Allen Chipman 
County of King's 

Samuel Bishop 

Jonathan Crane 
Town of Horton 

Sherman Denison 

Town of Cornwallis John Wells 

This 12th General Assembly met first on Tuesday, November 
12, 1820. Before the session began Colonel Jonathan Crane died. 
At the first meeting Mr. John Morton petitioned against Mr. John 
Wells' return for Cornwallis, charging that Mr. Wells was not 
legally qualified. Soon after Col. Crane's death Sherman Denison 
was elected in his place. 

THIRTEENTH ASSEMBLY, 1827-1830 

Samuel Bishop 
County of King's 

John Starr 



420 KING'S COUNTY 

Town of Horton James Harris, Jr. 

Town of Cornwallis John Morton 

FOURTEENTH ASSEMBLY, 1830-1837 

Samuel Chipman 
County of King's 

Elisha DeWolf, Jr. 

Town of Horton James Harris, Jr. 

Town of Cornwallis John Morton 

FIFTEENTH ASSEMBLY, 1837-1841 

Samuel Chipman 
County of King's 

Thomas Andrew Strange DeWolf 

Town of Horton Perez M. Benjamin 

Town of Cornwallis John Morton 

SIXTEENTH ASSEMBLY, 1841-1844 

Thomas Andrew Strange DeWolf 
County of King's 

Samuel Chipman 

Town of Horton William Johnson 

Town of Cornwallis Mayhew Beckwith 



POLITICS 421 

SEVENTEENTH ASSEMBLY, 1844-1848 

Thomas Andrew Strange DeWolf 
County of King's 

John Clarke Hall 

Town of Horton Perez M. Benjamin 

Town of Cornwallis Mayhew Beckwith 

EIGHTEENTH ASSEMBLY, 1848-1851 

John Clarke Hall 
Comity of King's 

Daniel Moore 

Town of Horton Edward L. Brown 

Town of Cornwallis Mayhew Beckwith 

NINETEENTH ASSEMBLY, 1851-1855 

John Clarke Hall 
County of King's 

Daniel Moore 

Town of Horton Edward L. Brown 

Town of Cornwallis Samuel Chipman 

TWENTIETH ASSEMBLY, 1855-1860 

Caleb R. Bill 
County of King's 

William B. Webster 



42^ KING'S COUNTY 

Town of Horton Edward L. Brown 

Town of Cornwallis Samuel Chipman 

TWENTY-FIRST ASSEMBLY, 1860-1863 

County of King's 

"William Burgess 
North Division 

Samuel Chipman 

John L. Brown 
South Division 

William B. Webster 

TWENTY-SECOND ASSEMBLY, 1863-1868 

County of King's 

Charles Cottnam Hamilton 
North Division 

Caleb R. Bill 

Daniel Moore 
South Division 

Edward L. Brown 

TWENTY-THIRD ASSEMBLY, 1868-1871 

Edward L. Brown 
County of King's 

David M. Dickie 

TWENTY-FOURTH ASSEMBLY, 1871-1874 

Daniel C. Moore 
County of King's 

Douglas Benjamin Woodworth 



POLITICS 423 

TWENTY-FIFTH ASSEMBLY, 1874-1878 

Douglas Benjamin Woodworth 
County of King's 

John B. North 

TWENTY-SIXTH ASSEMBLY, 1878-1882 

William C. Bill 
County of King's 

James S. McDonald 

TWENTY-SEVENTH ASSEMBLY, 1882-1886 

Thomas Lewis Dodge 
County of King's 

Thomas R. Harris 

TWENTY-EIGHTH ASSEMBLY, 1886-1890 

Leander Rand 
County of King's 

William C. Bill 

TWENTY-NINTH ASSEMBLY, 1890-1894 

Barclay Webster 
County of King's 

Alfred P. Welton 

THIRTIETH ASSEMBLY, 1894-1897 

Brenton Halliburton Dodge 
County of King's 

Harry Hamm Wiekwire 



424 KING'S COUNTY 

THIRTY-FIRST ASSEMBLY, 1897-1901 

Brenton Halliburton Dodge 
County of King's 

Harry Hamm Wickwire 

THIRTY-SECOND ASSEMBLY, 1901-1906 

Brenton Halliburton Dodge 
County of King's 

Harry Hamm Wickwire 

THIRTY-THIRD ASSEMBLY, 1906— 

Brenton Halliburton Dodge 
County of King's 

Charles A. Campbell 

The complete list of members of the local Assembly from 
King's County to the present time is as follows: Joseph Allison, 
William Baxter, Mayhew Beck with, Benjamin Belcher, Perez M. 
Benjamin, Caleb R. Bill, William C. Bill, Samuel Bishop, Edward 
L. Brown, John L. Brown, William Burgess, Charles A. Campbell, 
John Chipman, Samuel Chipman, William Allen Chipman, Jona- 
than Crane, John Day, Gurden Denison, Robert Denison, Henry 
Denny Denson, Isaac Deschamps, Elisha DeWolf, Elisha DeWolf, 
Jr., Thomas Andrew Strange DeWolf, Charles Dickson, Brenton 
Halliburton Dodge, Thomas Lewis Dodge, John Clarke Hall, Charles 
Cottnam Hamilton, James Harris, Jr., Lebbeus Harris, Thomas R. 
Harris, William Johnson, Elisha Lawrence, Samuel Leonard, James 
S. McDonald, Daniel Moore, Charles Morris, John Morton, John B. 
North, Jeremiah Northrup, Leander Rand, Joshua Sanford, Winek- 
worth Tonge, Barclay Webster, William Bennett Webster, William 
Welch, John Wells, Alfred P. Welton, Stephen West, Harry Hamm 
Wickwire, Samuel Willoughby, Douglas B. Woodworth, Edward 
York. 



POLITICS 425 

Members of the Legislative Council of King's County origin 
have been: 

Hon. Joseph Allison 

Hon, Samuel Chipman 

Hon, Henry Hezekiah Cogswell 

Hon. Charles Dickie 

Hon. Thomas Lewis Dodge 

Hon. James Delap Harris 

Hon. John Morton 

Hon. Henry Gesner Pineo 

Hon. Charles Ramage Prescott [Appointed August 30, 1825] 

Hon. James Ratchford 

Hon. John Leander Starr 

Members of the Executive Council, of King's County origin, 
have been: 

Hon. Thomas Andrew Strange DeWolf 

Hon. Samuel Chipman 

Hon. Sir Charles Tupper, Bart. 



CHAPTER XXY 
THE COUNTY^S MILITIA 

In the chapter in this book which gives glimpses of the Acadians 
in King's County shortly before the expulsion, the fact has been 
mentioned that in 1749 the block-house at Annapolis was taken 
down and transported to Minas, and that a small permanent force 
was thereafter kept at the latter place. The order of Governor 
Cornwallis to Lieut.-Col. Mascarene at Annapolis directing the 
removal of the block-house, was as follows : * ' You are to keep the 
garrison at Annapolis Royal in readiness to march upon the shortest 
notice. Upon your arrival you are to detach one captain, three 
subalterns, and a hundred men to Minas. You are to cause the 
block-house now erected at Annapolis Royal to be taken down and 
transported to Minas, there to be set up for the protection of the 
detachment you are ordered to send there. You will constantly 
correspond with me, giving me an account of all transactions on 
your side of the Province". That a palisaded fort, with probably 
a larger or smaller building, at least for ordnance stores, also 
existed at Minas, seems almost certain, although the troops there 
were long quartered in houses rented for their accommodation. In 
1753, as we learn from Murdoch, this Minas fort, which bore the 
name "Vieux Logis", was abandoned, and the small force which 
had garrisoned it was removed permanently to Fort Edward. 

Of the county's defences after the New England planters came, 
our first notice is the following : "I have the satisfaction to acquaint 
your Lordships", writes the Hon. Jonathan Belcher, President of 
the Council, to the English Board of Trade, December 12, 1760, 
**that the townships of Horton, Cornwallis, and Falmouth are so 
well established that everything bears a most hopeful appearance; 
as soon as these townships were laid out by the Surveyor, palisaded 



THE COUNTY'S MILITIA 427 

forts were erected in each of them by order of the late Governor, 
with room to secure all the inhabitants, who were formed into a 
militia, to join what troops could be spared to oppose any attempts 
that might be formed against them by Indian tribes which had not 
then surrendered, and bodies of French inhabitants who were hover- 
ing about the country". 

The fort now erected in Horton was probably only the old 
fort Vieux Logis restored, but at Town Plot in Cornwallis probably 
a new one was made, and we have the authority of Major Robert 
William Starr for the fact that this latter was still in existence as 
late as from 1840 to 1850. "The spot where it stood", says Major 
Starr, "is still marked by a large old apple tree and a well. The 
building had been surrounded by a wooden palisade, with four 
small cannon, one at each corner. It was never sold, but as long 
as it was habitable was occupied by an old soldier, Sergeant Lovett, 
who lived there till he died, and then by his son John. A few years 
after John Lovett left it the old building was burned. During the 
Revolutionary War a small garrison was kept there. The fort at 
Grand Pre, called 'Fort Montague', was built on the hill, south of 
Horton Landing, so as to command the river. It is marked on the 
plan of the town in the Crown Land office in Halifax. The site 
is now private property. Some of the old cannon, which were larger 
than those at Town Plot, Cornwallis, were in use not many years 
since for Hallowe'en frolics. I think the Horton fort must have 
been larger and more important than the Cornwallis one". It is 
probable that soon after 1761 additions were made by the govern- 
ment to the fortifications in King's County, for writing of the year 
1780, Murdoch says that the House of Assembly now requested the 
governor to sell the "barracks" that had been built at Cornwallis 
and Horton at an expense of about seven hundred pounds. 

In accordance with an act of the first Assembly, in 1758, a 
universal militia was in that year established in the province. This 
act, which was not changed or amended till the Revolutionary War 
began, provided that "all male persons, planters, and inhabitants, 
and their servants, between the ages of sixteen and sixty, residing 



428 KING'S COUNTY 

in and belonging to this province shall bear arms and duly attend 
all musters and military exercises". Immediately after the New 
England planters came to Nova Scotia, in every township where 
they settled militia regiments were formed, the officers receiving 
their commissions from the government at Halifax. In King's 
we find a commission given Oct. 14, 1761, to William Haliburton, 
as "Lieutenant in the company of Capt. Joseph Bailey", but in 
1761 and '62 we find commissions given to the officers of a company 
that may have been the first company organized strictly within the 
county after the advent of the New England men. 

The commissions given in this company were : Wignal Cole, 
Capt.-Lieut., July 28, 1761 ; William Kennedy, Capt., the same date j 
Henry Denny Denson, Col., May 31, 1762 ; Isaac Deschamps, Lieut.- 
Col., the same date ; Charles Dickson, Lieut.-Col., June 1 ; Elisha 
Lothrop, Major, May 31 ; Lebbeus Harris, Major, June 1 ; and Wil- 
liam Kennedy, Major, June 2, 1762; while some time in May of 
this year, it is recorded, Robert Denison resigned his commission as 
"Lieut.-Col. of Militia for the Township of Horton". July 28, 1762, 
Silas Crane was made Captain of a Troop of Horse, and Alexander 
McCuUoch, Lieut, in Capt. Crane's company. The same date com- 
missions were given to Joseph Willoughby as Capt. of Militia, 
Joseph Woodworth, as Lieut., and William Bishop as 2nd Lieut. 
December 18, 1762, Winckworth Tonge was made Col.-Commander 
of Horse Militia (the same gentleman having been appointed Ensign 
in CoL Hugh Warburton's Regiment of Foot, August 31, 1749). 

March 15, 1764, Joseph Woodmass was commissioned Major 
of Horse Militia; March 22, 1764, John Day, Major of Militia; 
June 2, Joseph Woodmass, Lieut.-Col. of Militia; June 20, Moses 
Delesdernier, Capt. of Horse; June 27, John Day, Lieut.-Col. of 
Militia ; July 10, Isaac Deschamps, Col. ; August 28, John Burbidge, 
Major; Aug. 6, 1767, Abel Burbidge, 1st Lieut.; July 5, 1770, Samuel 
Beckwith, Capt. ; July 6, John Bishop, Capt. ; May 1, 1773, Samuel 
Starr, 1st Lieut. ; May 7, Asa Beckwith, 1st Lieut. Light Infantry ; 
May 8, Thomas Parrel, Capt.-Lieut. Light Lif antry ; Abraham New- 
comb, 1st Lieut.; Barnabas Tuthill Lord, 1st Lieut. 



THE COUNTY'S MILITIA 429 

On the occasions for military activity in the county during 
the 18th century the general documents of the province give us 
considerable light. In 1761 the Government, fearing that a general 
revolt of the Micmacs and the few Acadians still in the province 
was contemplated, ordered the militia of King's to collect the 
Acadians resident in the county and bring them at once to Halifax. 
The result of this order was that Lieut.-Col. Kobert Denison of 
Horton, with a strong detachment of militia, escorted a hundred 
and thirty of the French to Halifax and delivered them into the 
custody of the regular troops there. 

On the breaking out of the American "War in 1775, Light 
Infantry companies were ordered by the Governor to be formed 
in the various townships of King's and other counties. The number 
of the King's County contingent was to be fifty men at Cornwallis, 
fifty at Horton, and fifty at Windsor, Newport, and Falmouth, to- 
gether. Fearing sj'-mpathy on the part of the Nova Scotians who 
had come from New England with their rebellious kinsmen in the 
New England colonies, Governor Legge further ordered that all 
grown men in the several townships should take an oath of alle- 
giance to the British Crown. In pursuance of this order, on the 27th 
of November, 1775, the Governor reported to the Earl of Dartmouth 
that in Halifax, King's, and Annapolis counties upwards of seven 
hundred of the principal inhabitants had not only taken the oaths 
but had entered into an association, acknowledging their duty and 
fidelity to his Majesty and giving unqualified allegiance to the 
authority of his Parliament. 

To the Light Infantry company at this time established in 
King's County the following commissions were given: July 19, 
1775, John Burbidge, Capt.; William Bishop, 1st Lieut.; Samuel 
Denison, 2nd Lieut. July 20, 1775, Samuel Starr, Capt., Seth 
Burgess, 1st Lieut., Judah Wells, 2nd Lieut., John Beckwith, 2nd 
Lieut. July 21, 1775, Joseph Northup, Capt. July 26, 1775, 
Peter Grey, 1st Lieut. May 25, 1776, Michael Francklin was com- 
missioned Colonel to and Captain of a company to be raised within 
the districts of Windsor, Newport, Falmouth, Horton, Cornwallis, 
and Cobequid, and also within Cumberland; the same date John 



430 KING'S COUNTY 

Burbidge was commissioned Lient.-Col. of the regiment of which 
Michael Francklin was Colonel. Sept. 6, 1781, John Burbidge was 
commissioned Colonel in this regiment, in place of Michael 
Francklin, resigned. 

.Precisely how much sympathy was felt in King's County with 
the Kevolution in the New England Colonies it is not easy to deter- 
mine. Among the men sent from England to govern the province 
of Nova Scotia during nearly a century and a quarter, not one ever 
showed such ill-temper as Governor Legge, the incumbent of the 
governorship at the outbreak of the war. His charges of disloyalty 
towards England included, not only the inhabitants of the province 
who had recently come from New England, but the staunchest mem- 
bers of the Council at Halifax as well. As early as January, 1776, he 
writes disparaging letters concerning the New England settlers 
to the British Secretary of State. A law has been passed, he says, 
to raise fresh militia troops, and he has been endeavouring to arm 
the people, but he has just been informed from Annapolis and King 's 
counties that the people in general refuse to be enrolled. Though 
Governor Campbell 's report to Lord Hillsborough in 1770 had stated 
that he did not discover in the people of Nova Scotia any of that 
"licentious principle" with which the neighbouring colonies were 
infected, it is a well known fact that in Cumberland, in 1776, the 
greatest disaffection towards England did prevail. 

That it would have been perfectly natural if the people of the 
midland counties of Nova Scotia had sympathized with New England 
in her protest against the abuse of power on the part of the British 
Government from which she had long suffered must be freely 
admitted, that among the inhabitants of Annapolis, King's, and 
Hants such sympathy was outwardly shown, remains yet to be 
proved. On the contrary, as the Hon. Michael Francklin in opposi- 
tion to Governor Legge represents, in Windsor, Newport, Falmouth, 
Horton, and Cornwallis, three hundred men had declared themselves 
ready to enroll voluntarily as militia, and to enter into a formal 
association under oath for the defence of the province. Soon after 
his declaration to the Secretary of State concerning the loyalty of 



THE COUNTY'S MILITIA 431 

the provincials Mr, Francklin did enroll two companies at Windsor, 
one at Falmouth, three at Cornwallis, and one at Newport, this force 
comprising, as he says, three hundred and eighty-four able-bodied 
men, the number later being increased to four hundred and fifty, 
in all more than nine-tenths of the men fit to bear arms in these 
townships. This same year, however, possibly misled by Grovernor 
Legge's evident misrepresentations, the Judges of the Supreme 
Court appointed to hold courts in Annapolis and King 's stated to 
the Council that in their opinion their circuits in these counties 
would probably be ineffectual for want of jurymen who would take 
the oath, and would be attended with danger ' ' from piratical vessels 
in the Bay of Fundy, fitted out by the rebels", whereupon the hold- 
ing of courts in these counties was deferred from June till the 
September term. 

During this period, says Murdoch, the people of Horton, Corn- 
wallis, and Windsor exhibited unmistakable loyalty, entering with 
alacrity Fort Edward, at Windsor, to garrison it, while the regular 
force there was sent to Cumberland to help restore order in that 
part of the province. That Governor Legge was wrong, and the 
Hon. Michael Francklin and the later historian right in their esti- 
mate of the temper of the people of these counties is further shown 
by the fact that in 1775 great alarm was felt by the inhabitants 
concerning the danger of invasion from New England, and that 
frequent applications were made to the government for ammunition 
for the militia 's use. These applications were granted, and in King 's 
County Henry Denny Denson was made distributing officer of 
ammunition and arms. 

In a brief manuscript history of the county, written some years 
ago for the Aikin Prize in connection with King 's College, the 
following statement, in effect, has been made; where the informa- 
tion contained in the statement was originally gained, however, we 
do not at present know. It is a well known fact that the King's 
Orange Rangers, a Loyalist corps raised in Orange County, New 
York, through the efforts of Lieut.-Col. John Bayard in 1776 
and '77, in October, 1778, were sent to reinforce the King's troops 



432 KING'S COUNTY 

in Nova Scotia, and that until the disbandment of the corps in 1783 
they were employed chiefly in garrison duty in Halifax. The state- 
ment of the writer of the manuscript in question is that in King's 
County symptoms of rebellion strongly showed themselves, one of 
these being that certain King's County people were even preparing 
to raise a liberty pole. This seditious spirit in King's being reported 
to the government at Halifax by Major Samuel Starr, a detachment 
of the Orange Rangers stationed at Eastern Battery, Halifax, was 
ordered to Cornwallis, under command of Major Samuel Vetch 
Bayard, Marching through Horton, these troops forded the Corn- 
wallis river near Port Williams, and according to orders, fixed 
bayonets. "With bright weapons glittering, colours flying, and 
drums beating, they marched up Church Street, across the dyke 
to Canard, down Canard Street, and back to Town Plot, where the 
barracks stood". Here they remained for a short time. "This 
fine display", says the writer of the manuscript, "awed all into 
submission, and the liberty pole remained in the woods". 

In 1781 the following commissions in a volunteer regiment to 
be embodied were given in King's County: Sept. 5, Samuel Starr, 
1st Major ; Sept. 6, Henry Denny Denson, Col., John Bishop, Lieut.- 
Col., Jonathan Crane, 2nd Major, Elkanah Morton, Capt. ; Sept. 7, 
John Whidden, Capt. ; Sept. 8, Asa Beckwith, Capt. ; Sept. 10, Wil- 
liam Bishop, Capt. ; Sept. 11, Judah Wells, Capt. ; Sept. 12, Samuel 
Denison, Capt. 

On the 21st of May, 1781, says Murdoch, about thirty rebels, 
in a shallop mounting "one carriage gun and six swivels", with 
two armed whale-boats, came up the Bay of Fundy to Cornwallis, 
seized a schooner belonging to Captain Sheffield, which was laden 
with goods for the River St. John, and carried her down the bay. 
They were pursued by Captains Bishop and Crane in a small 
schooner, with thirty-five men, but all these, after an engagement 
of twenty-five minutes, the rebels made prisoners, taking also their 
vessel. Upon this, Lieut. Benjamin Belcher, "of the Volunteer 
Militia of Cornwallis", with twenty-eight volunteers embarked on 
an armed sloop and sailed down the bay after the marauders. Near 



THE COUNTY'S MILITIA 433 

Cape Split, Lieut, Belcher came upon the men, one of whom his 
people killed. Taking to their whale-boats the rest of the rebels 
ran ashore at the Cape. Not being able for want of boats to follow 
them. Belcher re-captured Captain Sheffield's schooner and gave 
chase to the vessel that had been stolen from Bishop. This also he 
and his men regained, and when the vessels returned to Cornwallis 
the rebel prisoners were put into confinement. The expense of 
hiring the sloop Success, in which Lieut. Belcher pursued the 
marauders, the pay of the militia who had taken part in the chase, 
and the bringing of the prisoners "from Horton to Cornwallis", 
came to a hundred and seventy-five pounds, fourteen and fourpence. 
In 1793, the Governor, who was then Mr. (afterward Sir) John 
Wentworth, fearing that the French fleet at New York intended 
to sail for Halifax, issued orders for a thousand men from the 
regiments of Hants, King's, and Annapolis, to march to Halifax to 
assist, if need be, in protecting the town. With all possible speed 
a force of a thousand and fifty men, exclusive of officers, marched 
into Halifax, and were quartered on Melville Island, in the building 
that had been erected there for the reception of French prisoners 
from St. Pierre. "Perhaps a finer body of athletic, healthy, young 
men", says Governor Wentworth, "were never assembled in any 
country, nor men more determined to do their duty". One company, 
it is said, from Annapolis County, under Captain Willett, marched 
from Granville to Halifax, a distance of a hundred and thirty-five 
miles, in thirty-five hours. Colonel Barclay, the Adjutant-General, 
came with his men, refusing any pay; Colonel Van Cortlandt "of 
King's County" came with the force that was raised in the County 
of King's. In 1794, officers on duty at Halifax from the First King's 
County Regiment were : Major Elkanah Morton, and Captains 
Elijah West and Lemuel Morton. From the Second King's 
Regiment, Col. Philip Van Cortlandt, Lieut.-Col. Jonathan Crane, 
Major Samuel Leonard, Captains William Bishop, Francis Perkins, 
Gurdon Denison, Elisha DeWolf, and Capt.-Lieut. David Denison, 
Sept. 30, 1795, the First Regiment of King 's had an establishment of 
three hundred men, the Second, of two hundred and forty-four. 



434 KING'S COUNTY 

In 1795 an act was passed by the legislature to reduce into one 
act the several laws then in existence relating to a militia in the 
province. This law directed that every male inhabitant resident 
within the province, from sixteen to sixty-one years old, should be 
enrolled in some independent company, or in one of the already 
existing companies in the district where he lived. The militia was 
to be formed into regiments by counties ; if the county was populous 
enough the regiment should be divided into battalions of not less 
than three hundred men each, no company to consist of more than 
fifty-four men. These militia troops were to be provided with arms 
and ammunition, and were to train six times a year. In 1797 the 
''Second Regiment of King's County Militia", had as officers: Lieut.- 

Col., Jonathan Crane; Major, ; Capts., William Bishop, Francis 

Perkins, Patrick Henry; Capt.-Lieut., David Denison; 1st Lieuts.^ 
Simon Fitch, Samuel Bishop, William Allison, Samuel Denison, Jr. ; 
2nd Lieuts., Amasa Harris, Samuel Hamilton, John Bishop, Sherman 
Denison, Daniel DeWolf, Benjamin Lee; Adjutant, Nathaniel 
Caulkins ; Quartermaster, Sherman Denison ; Surgeon, Joseph Pres- 
cott; Chaplain, Eev. William Twining. Of that part of the Regi- 
ment located at Parrsborough, James Ratchford and Patrick Henry 
were Captains; Francis T. Pritchard, James Jenks, and Elisha 
Fowler were 2nd Lieuts. ; and Fones York was Adjutant. 

In 1818 the Sixth Battalion King's County Militia had as offi- 
cers: Lieut.-Col., William Campbell; Major, Henry Gesner; Cap- 
tains, E. Crane, W. C. Moore, John Wells, W. Chipman, D. Cogswell, 
Elisha Eaton, H. Cox, Gr. Pineo, G. Gumming, J. Cogswell, H. Van 
Buskirk, J. B. Best ; 1st Lieuts., J. Nisbet, J. Calkins, A. Beckwith, 
H. Chipman, J. Magee, W. Borden, J. Jackson, T. Barnaby, J. H. 
Gesner, J. Crane, N, Woodworth, J. Newcomb ; 2nd Lieuts., J. H. 
Chipman, J. J. Campbell, S. Chipman, D. H. Gesner, E. M. Terry, 
J. J. Allison, T. Fuller, J. Belcher, E. Calkin, S. Parker, F. Tupper; 
Adjutant, A. Beckwith ; Surgeon, Wm. Baxter. 

In 1828, the King's County Regiment had two battalions and a 
Parrsborough corps. The first battalion had as officers : Lieut.-Col., 
Henry Gesner; Major, William Charles Moore; Captains, John 



THE COUNTY'S MILITIA 435 

Wells, "William Chipman, Daniel Cogswell, John Morton, Jonathan 
Crane, John Nesbit, Asa Beekwith (Adjutant), F. Tupper, William 
Borden, Joseph Jackson, Timothy Barnaby. It had also eighteen 
first Lieuts., and seventeen second Lieuts. The Second Battalion 
had as officers : Lieut.-Col., Sherman Denison ; Major, E. Wood- 
worth ; Capts., J. N. Crane, Charles Brown, Simon Fitch, J. Graham, 
Ebenezer Bishop, Enoch Forsyth. It had eight first Lieuts. and 
eleven second Lieuts. The Parrsborough Corps had as officers: 
Lieut.-Col., James Ratchford; Capts., Edward Crane, James Ratch- 
ford, Jr. (Adjutant), Jesse Lewis, Oman Lewis, A. Thompson, 
Alexander Fullerton. It had six first Lieuts. and five second Lieuts. 

In 1843 the King's County Regiment comprised three bat- 
talions. Of the first battalion, the Lieut.-Col. was William Charles 
Moore; the Majors were John Wells and Timothy Barnaby. Of 
the second battalion, the Lieut.-Col. was Joseph Crane, the Major 
was John Fuller. Of the third battalion Jonathan Crane was Lieut.- 
Col., and David Davidson was Major. 

April 30, 1811, Lemuel Morton, Esq., M. P. P., died at Corn- 
wallis, in his fifty-sixth year. He was Major of the 6th Battalion of 
Militia, and his funeral was attended by a detachment of this 
battalion, under command of Captain Gesner. March 11, 1812, Col. 
John Burbidge died in Cornwallis, his funeral being attended by the 
other militia officers in their uniforms. In 1814, the officers of the 
*'16th Battalion of Nova Scotia Militia", were: Lieut.-Col., Jona- 
than Crane ; Majors, James Ratchford and Samuel Leonard ; Capts., 
Samuel Bishop, D. Denison, S. Denison, Samuel Denison, S. H. Crane, 
J, N. Crane, D. DeWolf, E. Woodworth, A. Harris, and J. Jenks. 

In 1818 the Commander-in-Chief of Nova Scotia troops was 
Lieut.-General, the Rt. Hon. Earl of Dalhousie, G. C. B., etc., etc.; 
Provincial aids were, Thomas N. Jeffery and Rupert Dennis George. 
Acting Adjutant-General was Lieut. John McColla. In the first 
battalion of Halifax Militia men of King's County origin were : Wm. 
Hersey Otis Haliburton, Benjamin DeWolf, Loren DeWolf, Jona- 
than Allison, and Joseph Starr. 

June 10, 1819, John McColla, Lieut.-Col. and Adjutant-General 



436 KING'S COUNTY 

of the militia in Nova Scotia, was appointed Inspecting Field Officer 
for the counties of Halifax, Hants, Cumberland, Sydney, and King's. 
In Governor Dalhousie 's address to the legislature in 1819, his lord- 
ship advised that a smaller number of men should be trained, and 
more efficiently trained, for militia service. In the discussion which 
followed the Governor's speech considerable difference of opinion 
was manifested regarding the wisdom of diminishing the militia 
force. In the course of the debate it was stated that the whole 
militia force of the province was thirteen thousand. In this dis- 
"Cussion Mr. William Allen Chipman from Cornwallis took an 
important part. The result of the debate was that a com- 
mittee of eleven was appointed to report what amendments were 
necessary to the then existing militia laws. 

On Monday, August 28, 1820, Col. Jonathan Crane died at 
Horton, aged 70 years. "He was senior member of the Assembly, 
and senior Col. of the militia". 

In 1827 King's had still but two battalions, the first commanded 
by H. Gesner, Lieut.-Col., and W. C. Moore, Major; the second by 
S. Denison, Lieut.-Col., and E. Woodworth, Major. In 1837 there 
were three regiments in King's besides a Parrsborough corps. Of 
the first battalion, W. C. Moore was Lieut.-Col., and John Wells, 
Major; of the second, Joseph Crane was Lieut.-Col., and Ebenezer 
Bishop, Major; of the third, John Morton was Lieut.-Col., but no 
major is gazetted. Of the Parrsborough corps, James Ratchford 
was Lieut.-Col., and Jesse Lewis, Jr., Major. In 1847, of the first 
battalion, W. C. Moore was Lieut.-Col., and John Wells and Timothy 
Barnaby were Majors ; of the second, Joseph Crane was Lieut.-Col. 
and John Fuller, Major; of the third, Jonathan Crane was Lieut.- 
Col., and David Davidson, Major. In 1857, of the first battalion, 
Hon. Samuel Chipman was Lieut.-Col. ; of the second, Joseph Crane 
was Lieut.-Col., and John Fuller, Major ; of the third, David David- 
son was Lieut.-Col. 

In 1864, it would seem, there were again but two regiments in 
King's, but in 1865 these were increased to six, numbered accord- 
ingly, a great many of the commissions in them being dated July 



THE COUNTY'S MILITIA 437 

19th of this year. September 27, 1865, commissions were given in 
a Volunteer Company, called the "Bellona Rangers", but this 
Volunteer Company we have not any farther traced. In 1867 King's 
had eight regiments of Foot, and a troop of Cavalry Guides, under 
command of Capt. Edward Allan Pyke. Of the 1st Regiment, David 
H. Clarke was Lieut.-Col., and Leander Rand and William H. 
Belcher were Majors; of the 2nd, John Leander Wickwire was 
Lieut.-OoL, and John S. Belcher and Robert William Starr were 
Majors ; of the 3rd, Leverett de Veber Chipman was Lieut.-Col., and 
Perez M. Brechin and J. B. Rockwell were Majors; of the 4th, 
William Israel Fuller was Lieut.-CoL, and John Strong was 
Major; of the 5th, John S. Welton was Lieut.-Col., and George 
Neily and William S. Magee were Majors; of the 6th, William 
S. Lyons was Lieut.-Col.; of the 7th, Charles J. Tobin was 
Lieut.-Col.; of the 8th, Thomas Tuzo was Lieut.-Col. The increase 
of militia forces in the county at this time was due largely 
to the Trent affair, and probably the Fenian troubles. In 1869, the 
same ofi&cers are gazetted, except in the case of the 6th Regiment, 
which has no Lieut.-Col., and of which, William R. Winsby and 
Joseph Buckley are Majors. 

In 1868, shortly after the confederation of the provinces, an 
act was passed by the Canadian Parliament relative to the Militia 
and Defence of the Dominion. By this act, which received sanction 
in May, 1868, the whole of Canada was divided into nine military 
districts, one in the province of Nova Scotia, one in New Brunswick, 
three in Quebec, and four in Ontario. For each regular division 
there were to be a lieut.-col. and two majors of Reserve Militia, and 
for each company division one captain, one lieutenant, and one 
ensign of Reserve Militia. Very soon after this Nova Scotia was 
divided into nineteen Regimental Divisions, comprised within three 
Brigade Divisions, identical with the Electoral Divisions into which 
the province was divided, with one exception, which was that the 
city and county of Halifax, each, formed a division. Of these brigade 
divisions, the second consisted of the Regimental Divisions of King's, 
Annapolis, Digby, Yarmouth, Shelburne, and Lunenburg counties. 



438 KING'S COUNTY 

In 1870 the Brigade Major of this second division was Lieut.-Col. 
Thomas Milsom. 

Shortly before 1870 conscription ceased in Canada and the 
volunteer system took its place. "With the exception of the Third 
King's, all the King's County regiments were disbanded; the third, 
its officers and men having volunteered to serve under the Canadian 
government, being reorganized, Sept. 10, 1869, as the 68th King's 
County Regiment of Canadian Militia, comprising eight companies. 
The successive Colonels of the 68th have been: Leverett de Veber 
Chipman, William Belcher, Edward Beckwith, and the present com- 
manding officer, Col. Wentworth Eaton Roscoe. The first command- 
ing officer of the regiment, Lieut.-Col. Leverett de Veber Chipman, 
is Honorary Colonel. In 1871, the Majors of the 68th Regiment 
were William H. Belcher, and Henry W. Lydiard; the Captains 
were: No. 1 Company, Brenton Halliburton Dodge; No. 2, Ben- 
jamin Smith; No. 3, John Redden; No. 4, Edward Steadman; No. 
5, T. R. lUsley ; No. 6, C. E. Borden ; No. 7, Thomas R. Harris ; No. 
8, James Palmer. The Adjutant was John Edward Starr; the 
Surgeon was Henry Shaw, M. D. ; the Asst. Surgeon was Frederick 
W. Borden, M. D. (now Sir Frederick Borden, K. C. M. G.). The 
present chief officers of the regiment are : Honorary Colonel, Lieut.- 
Col. Leverett de Veber Chipman (retired Aug. 8, 1908) ; Lieut.-Col., 
Wentworth Eaton Roscoe, K. C. ; Major, C. R. Ross; Captains, C. 
O. Harris, T. A. Neville, J. L. Barteaux, W. W. Brignell, W. J. 
Regan, A. H. Ross, B. W. Lyons, J. F. Neary. 

The present regiment of King's County Canadian Hussars was 
originally formed as a troop of horse but has since grown into a 
four squadron regiment. Of these four squadrons, two squadrons 
are recruited in King's, one in Hants, and one in Annapolis. The 
first Colonel of this regiment was Lieut.-Col. Joseph Northup of 
Canning, its second Colonel and present commanding officer is 
Lieut.-Col. Norval Henry Parsons. The 68th Regiment and the 
King's County Canadian Hussars are the two combatant corps; 
the non-combatant corps are, a detachment of Army Service Corps, 
raised in 1905, with Major Harry Hamm Wickwire as its command- 



THE COUNTY'S MILITIA 439 

ant ; and a detachment of Army Medical Corps, whose commanding 
officer is Lieut.-Col. John Addy Sponagle, M. D., A. M. O. for Mili- 
tary District No. 9, which covers the Maritime Provinces. 

A brief statement by Major Robert William Starr con- 
cerning the King's County militia is as follows: "Until about 1837 
regular annual drill was held in the county, but for some twenty 
years after that it was neglected. In 1860, however, volunteers 
were called for, and in Cornwallis a company, forty-five strong, 
was formed at Chipman's Corner, with Charles Gesner, Capt., and 
David H. Clarke, Lieut. The next year Capt. Gesner resigned and 
Lieut. Clarke was promoted to his place. In 1863, the whole militia 
was called out and drilled, but in 1864 the volunteer company was 
disbanded. Cornwallis now had three militia regiments, and more 
than half the volunteers passed the examinations and got com- 
missions in these regiments. One year after Confederation the 
volunteer system was reintroduced. 

In the early days of the English settlement of the county, 
militia drill was of course conducted at the various parades in 
Cornwallis — at Town Plot, Chipman's Corner, the Baptist Meeting 
House Corner, on Canard Street, Buckley's Corner, and other places. 
After confederation a central place for drill was established in 
"Aldershot", on the sandy Aylesford plain, near the Annapolis 
County line. In 1904 a new Aldershot ground was purchased by 
the Dominion Government in the "Pine Woods", Cornwallis, a 
short distance from Kentville, and there the annual militia drill will 
probably for many years to come be held. 

In the recent South African war, three young King's County 
soldiers, among other Canadians, especially distinguished themselves, 
two of them in the campaign or as a result of its hardships unhappily 
losing their lives. The third of these brave young officers survives. 
These young men were, Lieut. Harold Lothrop Borden, only son of 
Sir Frederick Borden, K. C. M. G. ; Major Robert Holden Ryan, 
son of Ex-Mayor James W. Ryan of Kentville; and Lieut. L. 
Beverly Barclay- Webster, of the Imperial Army, son of Barclay 
Webster, K. C, of Kentville. Notices of the first and last of these 



440 KING'S COUNTY 

young officers will be found in the Personal Sketches. The second. 
Major Kobert Holden Ryan, joined the Canadian forces in December, 
1899, and spent two years in South Africa. In 1901 he returned, 
but two months later reinlisted, and, in command of a company of 
Canadian scouts remained in South Africa until the end of the year. 
Major Ryan was in fifty-five general engagements and was wounded 
twice. He was with Lieut. Harold Borden when this young soldier 
was killed. On his final return to Nova Scotia he was given an 
enthusiastic public reception by his fellow townsmen. He now holds 
an important position with the General Electric Company in New 
York City. 

In the South African war, also, a King's County coloured man, 
"William Hall, now living at Hortonville, for unusual bravery 
received the distinguished honour of the Victoria Cross. 



CHAPTER XXyi 
CURRENT EVENTS 

In 1761, one Daniel Hovey in King's County was presented by 
the Grand Jury at a Quarter Sessions, ''for uttering certain expres- 
sions of a dangerous tendency, and highly derogatory to his obedi- 
ence to His Majesty" the King. The Justices, without trial, ordered 
him to find sureties for his good behaviour for twelve months, and 
committed him to the county gaol ^'for preaching the Gospel". The 
case was carried to the Council at Halifax, and that body promptly 
set the Justices' verdict aside. Precisely what treasonable utter- 
ances Daniel Hovey had made in ''preaching the Gospel" we do not 
know, but the Council evidently took a milder view of the case 
than the local Justices of the Peace had done. The Council, indeed, 
did not hesitate to pronounce the Justices ' orders ' ' irregular ' '. 

The same year an act was passed by the legislature for the 
registration of marriages, births, and deaths "in every township in 
the Province where no parish was established". The "Proprietor's 
Clerks" were to act as registrars of these statistics in the respective 
townships, and were to receive for every registry sixpence each, 
this fee to be paid by the persons married, or by the parents of, or 
the nearest of kin to, those who should be born or should 
die. In 1782 it was enacted that "as no Proprietor's Clerks 
existed in the several townships" this registration should be made 
by the Town Clerks. The Registrars were now to have a shilling 
for each entry, and to obviate the trouble that might in the future 
be caused by past neglect to record vital statistics, it was 
ordered that the Town Clerks should apply to the several clergymen 
in their townships for a list of all persons whose marriages, births, 
or deaths they had previously recorded on their books. To these 
early important acts of the legislature we owe the fact that con- 



442 KING'S COUNTY 

cerning early generations in the county we are able to obtain con- 
siderable public information. Through the evident loss of some of 
the earliest Horton vital records, and from the fact that the regis- 
tration acts were never enforced and after a few years ceased to be 
at all generally observed, of the families of the New England plant- 
ers in King's County after three generations, except in probate 
records or deeds, we are unable to find any public records at all. 
Fortunately, since the beginning of the 20th century a general 
Canadian act for the registration of vital statistics has come into 
force, but for at least three quarters of the 19th century genealogical 
facts concerning King's County families will have to be obtained, 
if at all, largely from private sources. 

The book of births, marriages, and deaths in Cornwallis eon- 
tains the following memorandum, made by the Town Clerk in June, 
1845 : ' ' William Allen Chipman has been town clerk since the year 
1794, and finding the book of records nearly full, and not room to 
record in coppying of the record that had been kept therein by him- 
self after his appointment and by several different clerks into this 
book, which he provided himself at his own expense, and then 
continued to record in this all those he could get to record, but by 
advertising and otherwise he cannot prevail on persons to get their 
family records without he put the law in force". 

In Council, August 28, 1762, the Governor declared that his 
Majesty's ministry were so much offended at the members of the 
Assembly who had failed to attend the house in the fall of 1761, 
that he had directions to dismiss them all from their employments, 
both civil and military. The Governor therefore ordered that among 
others, Robert Denison for King's County and Stephen West for 
Cornwallis should be dismissed. This Assembly lasted from 1761 
to 1765 but we have no intimation that any substitutes for the 
offending members were elected. 

In 1763, an Indian named Batholemew Nocout got into diffi- 
culty with some of the new settlers in Horton and Cornwallis and 
received at their hands severe if not dangerous injuries. He was 
doctored and cared for by Messrs. Burbidge and Best, and when 



CURRENT EVENTS 443 

he was better was taken to an Indian village near Cape Porcupine. 
Mr. Isaac Deschamps, by order of Lieut. Governor Belcher, went to 
Cornwallis and spent four days investigating the affair. The result 
was that Attorney General Nesbitt was ordered to prosecute at the 
next sessions of King's County those who had beaten Nocout. The 
offenders, however, admitted their fault and the trouble was satis- 
factorily settled without recourse to law. It is pleasing, says 
Murdoch, to find that if some of the new settlers were excitable, 
they were ready to acknowledge and make amends for their faults. 
Messrs. Burbidge and Best Murdoch calls ''good Samaritans, who 
could pity and relieve their fellow creature, no matter what was 
the name of his tribe or the colour of his skin". 

In May, 1766, petitions were presented to the Council from 
Horton, Cornwallis, and Falmouth, complaining that no business 
could be brought into the Courts without people's employing attor- 
nies, which were not to be had except at Halifax, and that the 
charges these men made were so exorbitant that it was better to lose 
debts, unless they were very large, than to sue for them. Protest 
was also made against the levying of "executions on real estate 
without any time of redemption". 

The chapters in which we have traced the history of the early 
churches of the county reveal with sufficient clearness that of ordi- 
nary religious controversies the townships of Cornwallis and Horton 
in early times had an abundant share, but in 1768 occurred an 
incident, which whatever else it suggests, reveals also in the sequel 
a manly willingness to confess a wrong. In 1767 the Rev. James 
Murdoch had settled in Horton, and thenceforward, as we have seen, 
for some years ministered there. In the Ifova Scotia Gazette of 
March 24, 1768, and in the Boston Gazette of March 31st of the same 
year, appeared the following advertisements: "I, J. L., of Corn- 
wallis, in King's County, do hereby confess, that whereas some time 
past I have rashly and inadvertently uttered and published a scan- 
dalous report of Rev 'd. James Murdoch, importing he was disguised 
with liquor at the dwelling house of Mr. S. S., in Cornwallis, which 



444 KING'S COUNTY 

report, although at that time any ways affected or disguised with 
liquor were false and groundless, and that my publishing such a 
report has greatly injured Mr. Murdoch's character and reputation,. 
I do, therefore, hereby further humbly, fully, and freely acknowl- 
edge and confess my fault in publishing such report, and heartily 
beg pardon of the said Mr. James Murdoch for the injury I have 
done him, and of all good people who have been offended thereby. 
"Signed in presence of William Dickson and D. Sherman 
Denison. Horton, March 24, 1768". 

"The confession of me S. S. viz., That whereas I have inad- 
vertently published some intimations with regard to the Revd. Mr. 
James Murdoch's being disguised with liquor, etc., which although 
I did it at that time in the simplicity of my heart, not having had 
the least acquaintance with the said Mr. Murdoch, and being like- 
wise confirmed in my opinion by Mr. J. L., I have, however, since 
sufficient reason to believe that those intimitations which I have 
published, tending to the defamation of Mr. Murdoch were false 
and ill-grounded, I do therefore openly, freely, and publickly confess 
my fault, and do heartily ask Mr. Murdoch's forgiveness, and all 
good people whom I have thereby offended. S.S. 

"Signed in the presence of Elijah Bent and Jonathan "Wood- 
bury. Horton, March 24, 1768." 

May 13, 1768, Moses Clark received permission from the Legis- 
lature to alienate his grant in Horton to Sylvanus Minor, Jr., 
Thomas Minor, and James Minor. Aug. 8, 1769, a tract of dyked 
marsh of eighteen acres, adjoining land that had belonged to 
Charles Dickson, Esq., was ordered to be sold at execution sale. 
This land consisted of a tract of dyked marsh of eighteen acres, 
adjoining land of Col. William Forster, ten acres of undyked marsh, 
and two hundred and forty acres of upland, with a sawmill thereon, 
adjoining lands of Francis Perkins. 

January 1, 1770, a return of the state of the township of Horton 
was made to the government, in which the number of persons of 



CURRENT EVENTS 445 

both sexes in the families is given. This book will be found in the 
Kecord Office in Halifax. 

Feb. 23, 1770, John Burbidge advertises land on the Bowing 
Dyke, belonging to several persons, to be sold for taxes. 

May 24 and June 7, 1770, in the Nova Scotia Gazette were adver- 
tised the names of men who had not paid their ''proper taxes in 
Horton". The list comprised: Henry Burbidge, Samuel Griffin, 
Daniel Hovey, David Johnson, Brotherton Martin, Silas and Stephen 
Ransom, and others. The names signed to the advertisement are : 
Lebbeus Harris, Robert Avery, Amos Rathburn, Charles Dickson. 
In 1776 other persons in Horton were advertised as failing to pay 
rates assessed by the Commissioners of Sewers for labour and ex- 
pense incurred on the dykes. 

July 6, 1772, the Nova Scotia Gazette advertised that letters 
were lying in the Halifax Post Office for Elkanah Morton, Benjamin 
Newcomb, Thomas Ratchford, Delph (possibly Desire) Ratchford, 
Samuel Sherman, John Whidden, and Elisha Woodworth, of Corn- 
wallis; Jacob Brown and Thomas Davis, of Horton; and James 
Hamilton of Pisiquid. 

In 1770, "some townships" called town meetings "to debate and 
resolve on several questions relating to the laws and government of 
the province". April 14, the Governor and Council ordered the 
Attorney General to notify all persons concerned that such meet- 
ings were contrary to law, and that if they persisted in holding 
them he would prosecute them. That Horton and Cornwallis were 
among the offending townships is not stated in print, but from the 
independent character of the people in these townships it would not 
be strange if they were. 

In 1774, the circuits of the Supreme Court were first established, 
by an act which authorized the holding of the court at Horton, 
Annapolis, and Cumberland, the length of the session at each place 
to be not more than five days. At these sessions two judges were 
required to be present. The terms at Halifax were fourteen days 
each, with liberty to sit six days longer if necessary. 



446 KING'S COUNTY 

In 1772, Handley Chipman of Cornwallis, in the Nova Scotia 
Gazette and Weekly Chronicle, advertises no less than five lots of 
land for sale. 

In the same newspaper, Sept. 4, 1774, appears the following 
advertisement: ''To be seen at Mr. David Chambers, at the sign 
of the Half Moon (of course in Halifax), a strange Beast, lately 
taken in the woods near Windsor; it has wool, and is of the size 
of a sheep, its head and nose is like a moose ; its neck stands awry. 
It will be shewn between the hours of 10 and 3 o'clock, at sixpence 
each". Whether Halifax showmen had already learned the modern 
art of the manufacture of "freaks", or whether a specimen of some 
now extinct order of animal had really been found "in the woods 
near Windsor", we are at a loss to know. The same year a govern- 
ment survey was made of land on Minas Basin, ' ' on the road leading 
from Partridge Island to Cumberland, 93 lots, containing 26,551 
acres". 

In June 1773, it is said, the Nova Scotia Gazette printed the first 
obituary notice of the modern kind that appeared in the Nova Scotia 
press. In the issue of the Gazette of April 11, 1775, the following 
laudatory obituary of a King's County woman, Mrs, Handley Chip- 
man, appears : ' ' On Wednesday evening, the 5th instant, departed 
this life, much lamented by all who knew her, Mrs. Jane Chipman, 
the amiable consort of Handley Chipman, Esq., of Cornwallis. The 
particular relations which she sustained of a wife, a mother, a mis- 
tress, a neighbour, and a friend, she discharged with a propriety 
equalled only by few. She opened her mouth with wisdom, and in 
her tongue was the law of kindness. Her death was occasioned by a 
fall from a horse on the 20th of December last, which broke both 
bones of her left ankle in a most terrible manner, under which, and 
a fever which ensued, she lingered a hundred and six days. She bore 
the whole of her long, distressing confinement with remarkable Chris- 
tian patience and resignation, and as the life which she lived in the 
flesh appeared to be 'by the faith of the Son of God', so her latter 
end was peace, having finished her course with joy, in the confident 
hope of a glorious immortality. She was daughter of Col. John 



CURRENT EVENTS 447 

Allen of Martha's Vineyard, and granddaughter to the Rev. William 
Holmes, deceased, formerly minister on said Island. She has left 
behind a disconsolate husband, three sons, and two daughters. On 
the Sabbath evening after, she was decently interr'd; previous to 
which, the corps being carried to the Meeting House, the Rev. B. 
Phelps preached a sermon suitable to the occasion, from St. John 20th 
and 28th, 'My Lord and my God', and the Rev. Mr. Bennett in his own 
church preached also a sermon suitable to the melancholy occasion. 
The memory of the Just is Blessed. Daughters of Eve, feel with 
what force the bright Example shines. She was what you should be ' '. 

January 11, 1775, sixty-one and a half acres of dyked-land on 
the Grand Pre, in Horton, which had belonged to the Hon. Ben- 
jamin Gerrish, was advertised for sale. 

In 1775 smallpox spread through the whole town of Falmouth, 
though only two persons died of it. Vaccination was common at 
this time, and among others the young preacher, Henry Alline, was. 
vaccinated. In his journal Alline praises vaccination. May 3, 1778, 
at his home in Falmouth, he was requested to go to Cornwallis to- 
see a woman with whom he had previously boarded who was very 
ill with the disease. He went at once, and when the woman died he 
preached her funeral sermon. His text was from First Thessalo- 
nians 4 :13 to the end of the chapter. It is probable that there were 
a good many cases of smallpox in Cornwallis at this time. 

April 26, 1779, the names of several persons in Horton who had 
not paid their taxes on the ' ' Dykes of Grand Paree ' ' were published 
in the Nova Scotia Gazette; if the taxes were not paid their dyke- 
lands were to be sold. The advertisement is signed by Lebbeus 
Harris, Amos Rathburn, John Turner, John Bishop, Jr., and Jona- 
than Crane. 

March 1, 1779, the Gazette advertised for sale a commodious 
dwelling house and barn, '4n the very centre of the Grand Paree, 
on the main road leading from the late Col. Dixon's to Cornwallis, 
together with three hundred acres of good land". Enquiry to be 
made of John Butler, John Fillis, Joseph Fairbanks, Thomas Coch- 
ran (all of Halifax). 



448 KING'S COUNTY 

March 22, 1779, the following advertisement appeared in the 
Gazette : ' ' Some time last summer, was left at the house of Edward 
DeWolf in Horton a box of Plyson Tea, marked E. D. with chalk, 
containing 20 pounds in pound papers, and two large Table Cloths. 
"Whoever claims the same and makes their title good, may have it 
with paying the expence to Edward DeWolf, or Elisha DeWolf". 

January 9, 1780, Mrs. Pheby Hamilton of Horton advertises 
that that she has "taken up" a black mare, "about foreteen hands 
high". 

A volume (No. 361) is to be found in the Public Records office, 
Halifax, containing papers of the partition of the townships of Fal- 
mouth, Horton, Yarmouth, Onslow, Londonderry, and Newport, 
from 1761 to 1784. This is "part of the Records of the Supremo 
Court on the partition of Townships by action of partition". A 
volume (No. 362) is also to be found, "containing the metes and 
bounds of the several lots of land in the township of Horton, under 
the proceedings in partition ; being the return made to the Supreme 
Court in the partition of that township ' '. 

In the Records Office is also preserved a little manuscript hook 
signed by Benjamin Belcher, which gives a "true account of the 
stock in the township of Cornwallis in 1786 ' '. The amount owned by 
every man of importance is given, a summary being as follows ; 
Horses 449 ; oxen and bulls 505 ; cows 769 ; young cattle 956 ; sheep 
2,659; hogs 1,421 — "calves not included" in this list. 

In 1786, a market was held at Windsor every Tuesday and 
Saturday ; at Fort Hill, Windsor, a fair was held the second Teiesday 
in October (October 10th). In 1787, and 1788, Prince William 
Henry, afterward King William IV., was in Halifax as a naval 
officer in command of the Pegasus frigate. On one of these visits, 
it is likely the first, he passed through King's County on horseback, 
Drobably to Annapolis. He is said to have been entertained in Hor- 
ton by Sheriff John Thomas Hill, at whose house he stayed all night, 
and the next day to have dined at Col. John Burbidge 's at the Corn- 
wallis Town Plot. 

April 8, 1788, Messrs. Jonathan Crane, Elisha Lawrence, and 



CURRENT EVENTS 449 

Benjamin Belcher, of King's County, all in the House of Assembly, 
addressed a memorial to the lieut.-governor, praying that Messrs. 
Sterns and Taylor, two attornies at law in Halifax who had recently 
been disbarred for making complaints against Judges Deschamps 
and Brenton, be restored to practice. This petition of the King's 
County members was denied. A little later articles of impeach- 
ment were framed and presented to the legislature against these 
judges. It was charged that persons were tried by these men, and 
not causes, and that the judges did not fail to favour their friends. 
Major Crane wished the judges tried; he said in the House that if 
in public office he himself were charged with misconduct he should 
certainly wish for and insist on a fair investigation; that truth 
feared no scrutiny, and that only a trial would satisfy the people 
of the province at large. 

In 1792, Murdoch says, "the Province was quietly prospering 
and increasing in population. The influx of the Loyalists, many of 
whom were men of family and education, was in the main advan- 
tageous, although the influence they wielded, owing to their great 
favour in the eyes of the King, gave them a growing ascendancy, 
calculated to throw in the background the merits and services of 
those families who had originally founded the British colony here, 
and who had largely contributed to the defence of the land in the 
French wars". 

In 1793, the postage on letters between Halifax and Horton w^as 
sixpence, the distance being reckoned at sixty-three miles; between 
Windsor and Horton the postage was fourpence, the distance being 
reckoned as seventeen miles. 

The famous visit of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, to this 
county occurred in 1794. On Saturday, June 14th, his Royal High- 
ness set off from Halifax, with a small retinue, on horseback, for 
Annapolis Royal, where the sloop of war Zehra was to await him, to 
take him across the Bay to New Brunswick. The only pause of 
importance that he is known to have made in King's County was at 
Wolfville, where he was entertained, whether for the night or not 
we do not know, at Judge Elisha DeWolf's. In St. John he was 



450 KING'S COUNTY 

received by Governor Carleton and Major Ludlow with every mark 
of loyalty, and in the new province he remained until the 24th. On 
the evening of that day he again boarded the Zehra, and reaching 
Annapolis rode back to Halifax, where he arrived on the 28th. The 
Duke of Kent 's stay in Nova Scotia extended from May, 1794, until 
August, 1800. During this time, however, on account of a severe 
accident he had had, he spent almost a year in England, whither he 
found it necessary to go for treatment. 

In February, 1798, such heavy snow fell that the road from 
Windsor to Halifax became impassable. For almost a fortnight a 
drove of thirty-five cattle on their way to Halifax were detained at 
Windsor. At the end of the fortnight, however, the road having 
been cleared, they reached their destination. 

In 1798, loyal subscriptions were raised in King's County for 
the Home Government. At Cornwallis, £342.2.6 was subscribed; at 
Parrsborough, £65.3.9. May 23, it is recorded, the magistrates and 
principal militia ofiicers of Cornwallis assembled at the house of 
Philip Marchington, Esq., in Halifax. "There was a repast and 
loyal toasts. Chief Justice Blowers, Judge Desehamps, Hon. Thomas 
Cochran, and Attorney-General Uniacke, were present", and a 
liberal subscription, probably the amount above, was made in aid 
of the Government. 

June 29, 1798, Governor Wentworth advertises for the appre- 
hension of persons who in disguise, Sept. 11th of the previous year 
had forcibly entered the dwelling house of Archibald Thomson at 
Five Islands, in King's County, *'and there with force and violence 
took and carried away a quantity of wine, spirits, and other 
conterband goods, which Charles Fraser, Esq., Inspector and Searcher 
in that district had seized according to law, etc. ' ' He wished to bring 
* * such atrocious offenders to justice ' '. 

In 1800 the seats of Mr. Lovett for Annapolis, Mr. Morton for 
Cornwallis, Mr. Bolman for the town, and Mr. Wilkins for the county, 
of Lunenberg, were severally petitioned against. 

It is said that winnowing machines were first introduced into 
King's County about 1803. These simple agricultural implements 



CURRENT EVENTS 451 

worked so mysteriously that people felt there was some witchery 
about them. 

January 20, 1804, David Whidden, High Sheriff of King's, 
advertises in the Royal Gazette land at "Scotch Bay", to be sold at 
public auction at the house of Thomas Borden, on the 15th of May 
following, February 21, 1805, Abigail, widow of Stephen Belcher, 
advertises to persons having demands against her late husband's 
estate. 

In February, 1810, King's County had forty-three Justices of 
the Peace. In this year, John Chipman was Gustos Rotulorum. 

In a notable election in the county in 1811, to which reference 
has already been made, ten days were spent in choosing representa- 
tives. The poll opened at the Presbyterian Meeting House at Chip- 
man's Corner, Cornwallis, where it was conducted probably for 
three days. It was then removed to the court house in Horton, 
where it lasted for three days; finally it was removed to Parrs- 
borough, where it was held for four days. A detailed account of the 
election is to be found in the Halifax Gazette of that period. 

In February, 1811, the Halifax Committee of Trade published 
a project for a Provincial Joint Stock Bank. One of the committee 
was Charles Ramage Prescott. At some time in this year, Alexander 
Morrison, the only bookseller in Halifax, resigned business in 
favour of his successor, George Eaton, formerly of Cornwallis. Mr. 
Morrison died early in 1814, aged sixty-seven. His shop was at the 
corner of Granville and Duke Streets. Mr. Eaton was the fourth 
son of Elisha and Irene (Bliss) Eaton of Cornwallis, and a brother 
of the late Mrs. Ward Eaton. He was born April 6, 1790, and mar- 
ried in 1813 Anne Catherine, daughter of Walter Carroll and 
Susannah (Church) Manning. He died in Halifax, October 8, 1822. 
It is said that the Hon. Joseph Howe began life in Mr. Eaton's 
employ, as did also Mr. Eaton's successor, the late Mr. Clement Hor- 
ton Belcher. 

In the Gazette of May 15, 1811, we find recorded the death at 
Cornwallis, on the 30th of April, of Lemuel Morton, Esq., 
member of the House of Assembly, and Major of the 6th Battalion 



452 KING'S COUNTY 

of Militia. His funeral, it is said, was attended by a detachment of 
the Battalion, under command of Captain Gesner. On the 20th of 
Sept., 1811, the Rev. George Gilmore, M. A., Presbyterian, died 
at Horton, in his 88th year. He had come to Horton in 1788. 

February 12, 1812, Jared IngersoU Chipman and David Borden 
presented a petition to the legislature impugning the election of 
Jonathan Crane and John Wells and claiming their seats for 
themselves. "They asserted that Crane and "Wells united in the 
contest, and charged Crane with manufacturing votes by giving 
deeds of his own and other people's lands to persons fraudulently 
to qualify them to vote". They asserted "that if these and other 
votes, ascertained on the scrutiny to be had, were struck off, they, 
the petitioners, would have a majority", The petition, however, 
was apparently not received favourably for the petitioners. 

The records of the Court of General Sessions before 1812 are 
lost. The first record preserved is dated, Tuesday, October 13, 1812. 
On that day the Court opened at 10 o'clock, A. M. There were 
present, David Whidden, William Allen Chipman, Stephen Harring- 
ton, and John Wells, Esqs. William Chipman having been appointed 
Clerk of the Peace for the County of King's, the usual oath was 
administered to him in open court, Jared Ingersol Chipman, the pre- 
ceding clerk, resigning. The following Grand Jurors for the County 
being present were then called and sworn : Sherman Denison, fore- 
man, David Denison, George Johnson, Elihu Woodworth, Joseph 
Johnson, Jason Forsyth, Abraham Newcomb, Ambrose Banaby, 
Samuel Ells, Nathan Palmeter, John Woodworth, Holmes Chipman, 
Joshua Ells, Benjamin Kinsman, John Patterson, David Borden. 
The usual laws against Sabbath breaking, concerning license account- 
ship, etc., etc., were read. A petition was also read from Gibbs 
Pineo and others praying for a road across the new Pereau Dyke. 
The Court then adjourned till the next morning, at 10 o'clock. The 
entry is signed by William Chipman, Clerk. As the records go on 
we find bills against persons for ' ' tying a bush to the tail of Samuel 
Lilly's horse", throwing stones at people's houses, striking people, 
and other misdemeanours. We find the Grand Jury's recommenda- 



CURRENT EVENTS 453 

tion of Town Officers for the four townships, Cornwallis, Horton, 
Parrsborough, and Aylesford, — overseers of the poor, surveyors of 
highways, assessors, collectors of rates, constables, pound-keepers, 
hog-reaves, surveyors of bricks, gangers, cullers of fish, surveyors of 
lumber, inspectors and measurers of grain, clerks of the markets and 
sealers of measures, fence viewers, sealers of leather, inspectors of 
casks, inspectors of butter, clerks of license, and clerks of the towns. 
The first book of records covers the period between 1812 and 1845. 

In 1818, an election was held throughout the province, that in 
King's opening at the Horton Court House, June 25th. "A Mr. Hunt 
offered as a candidate, apparently for the purpose of delivering a 
speech, as he did not demand a poll. He spoke of the province as hav- 
ing been prosperous during thirty years of war, and as now suffering 
from want of money, without resources, not a dollar to be had, nor 
a friend to be found who has it. 'In such a time as this', he said, 
'is it right that we should be sued and put to unjust cost? Gentle- 
men, the giant Oppression appears; he rises in full view. It is the 
overflow of law and oppressive cost that is ruining the country. 
We see nothing, we hear nothing, but of law and lawyers in the 
House of Assembly and in the country. They are rising like locusts 
in the land of Egypt'. He describes the heavy expenses in suits for 
small debts, and gives the last House credit for curtailing them. He 
proposes abolishing costs on all suits for sums under a hundred 
pounds. He says: 'It is a time of peace and security. Reform and 
retrenchment ought to be our motto, not only in our public expen- 
diture, but within ourselves. Let us turn our thoughts to agricul- 
ture and manufactures and study to obtain a free and unshackled 
commerce; let us not imitate the ridiculous policy of the United 
States by laying on prohibitory taxes, or by enacting counter laws 
against all countries. The Commonwealth, the only one in all the 
world, is now becoming inflated with her own greatness and setting 
examples it would be dangerous to follow' ". The deliverer of these 
judicious and loyal sentiments was probably Mr. "William Hunt, who 
at this time kept a store in Kentville, but who afterward studied 



454 KING'S COUNTY 

medicine with Dr. Kobert Bayard, and when he had got his profes- 
sion, settled in St. John. 

In 1819, King's County is said to have seen its first resident 
practising lawyer. Before this the lawyers who tried cases in the 
Supreme Court in King's resided in other counties. 

Among the acts passed by the Assembly in 1819, is a "loan act", 
authorizing the loan of ten thousand pounds, in five, two, and one- 
pound treasury notes. This paper was to be lent on mortgage, in 
sums ranging from twenty-five to two hundred pounds, to owners 
of land in Annapolis and King's. The interest was to be paid 
yearly, the principal to be repaid, a third in 1822, a third in 1825, 
and a third in 1828. An act was also passed authorizing the building 
of the Windsor bridge by lottery, nine thousand pounds being the 
amount needed to be raised. Not nine thousand pounds, but 
five, seems to have been the amount really issued. 

From 1820 until 1828 or '30, Sir James Kempt was G-overnor 
of Nova Scotia. During his administration he travelled incessantly 
through the province, his first visit to Windsor, Horton, Cornwallis, 
and Annapolis occurring only three months after he came to the 
country. For this visit he left Halifax, on the 8th of September, 
1820. In July, 1823, in company with the Earl of Dalhousie, his 
immediate predecessor in the governorship, he again visited Windsor, 
Horton, and Cornwallis, on Thursday, the 17th of July, receiving a 
loyal address from the people of King's. In 1826 he made a third 
visit to Hants, King 's and Annapolis, this time accompanied by Cap- 
tain Leith of the Navy. Sir James was deeply interested in improving 
the roads and bridges of Nova Scotia ; his messages to the House on 
this subject are most urgent. On his first journey to Hants and 
King's as he was passing Mount Uniacke in his gig, the vehicle 
collided with a load of hay, the driver of which was asleep, and the 
Governor was thrown "out. It is doubtful, however, if he received 
any injury. 

In his chapter on the year 1825, under date of August 30th, 
Murdoch has the following note: "Charles Kamage Prescott, of 



CURRENT EVENTS 455 

Cornwallis, was appointed by the Lieutenant-Governor to the seat 
in H. M. Council, vacant by the death of Mr. (Hon. Charles) Hill 
and sworn into office". In the same chapter Murdoch writes: "The 
first bank established in Halifax advertised its opening September 
3rd, as a bank of issue and discount. It had no act of incorporation 
or charter. The partners who signed the public notice were : Henry 
H. Cogswell, president; William Pryor, vice-president; Enos Col- 
lins, James Tobin, Samuel Cunard, John Clark, Joseph Allison, 
Martin Gay Black". April 17, 1827, John Whidden, of Cornwallis, 
was sworn in as Clerk of the Assembly in Halifax, in place of James 
Boutineau Francklin, who on account of age had retired. 

On the 30th of December, 1827, John Starr, Esq., M. P. P., 
member for King's County, died at his residence in Halifax, in his 
fifty-third year. 

March 29, 1841, an act was passed by the Nova Scotia legisla- 
ture making it unlawful to punish people by setting them in the 
pillory, by publicly whipping them, by nailing their ears to the 
pillory, or by cutting off their ears. Such punishment thereafter 
was to be changed to imprisonment, solitary imprisonment if neces- 
sary, with hard labour if the Court should so decree. It is not 
known that the pillory was ever used in King's County, or that 
people there were publicly whipped, but in Halifax, in April, 1821, a 
man convicted of forgery was sentenced to have one ear cut off, to 
stand in the pillory an hour, and to be imprisoned for a year. 

In 1840, and later, it cost ninepence, or about fifteen cents, to 
send a letter from Nova Scotia to the United States. Accordingly, 
people sent letters whenever they could by private hands. 
*' Throughout the country", says Dr. John Calkin, "there might be 
seen in almost every house letters standing on the top of the lower 
window-sash, in transit. They had been brought thus far on their 
way by some chance traveller and were waiting for some other 
traveller to carry them on. Pedlars, who went up and down with 
their wares were often made use of as letter carriers ' '. 

In 1841, the Court of Sessions granted "shop licenses" in King's 
County to Asa S. Angus, William Burge (Burgess), Samuel Cupples, 



456 KING'S COUNTY 

James Edward DeWolf, George Dodge, Henry Hamilton, and Daniel 
Moore. About 1843, the Temperance cause began to be advocated in 
the county, and divisions of the ''Sons of Temperance" to be estab- 
lished. In 1844, the weevil, or wheat-fly, first appeared in the coun- 
ty ; the next year this insect almost completely destroyed the wheat 
crop. 

In 1847, there was a general failure of the potato crop, caused 
by rot. In 1849, the summer was unusually dry. In 1851, a light- 
house was built at Horton Bluff. It was a square, white building, 
standing ninety-five feet above high water, and it had a fixed white 
light. 

In 1852 and '53, as we have mentioned in a previous chapter, 
a potato disease swept some parts of the United States, and conse- 
quently there was great demand in New England for Cornwallis 
potatoes. In September, 1852, potatoes brought forty cents a 
bushel; before navigation closed they rose to seventy cents; in the 
spring of 1853 they brought a dollar a bushel. This unusual price 
for what was then the most generally cultivated King's County 
crop, brought a great deal of money into the county. 

In 1852, a post-office was established at lower Horton, the post- 
master appointed being J. Borden. In this year also. Professor Isaac 
Chipman and some of his students at Acadia college were drowned 
in Minas Basin. 

In 1854, a post-office was established at Aylesford, the post- 
master appointed being Van Buskirk. 

In 1858, a ladies' seminary was opened at "Wolfville, with Rev. 
John Chase as head master. 

In 1861, gold was discovered in a small brook which runs into 
Halfway River, about six or seven miles south of Wolfville. In this 
year real estate in the county by assessment was valued at $3,775,928 ; 
personal property at $649,492. In this year, also, diphtheria was an 
epidemic, a hundred and forty-four persons dying in the county in 
the course of the year. In two Horton families, one containing six, 
the other seven children, eleven children died. 

In 1862, the Minas Marine Insurance Company, was founded by 



CURRENT EVENTS 457 

John W. Barss, Joseph R. Hea, William DeWolf, Ezra Churchill, 
James W. Harris, and John L. Brown. In 1865 an agency of the 
People's Bank was established at Wolfville, and John W. Barss was 
appointed its agent. 

In the autumn of 1869, occurred the great ''Saxby gale", and 
a high tide which did great damage to the dykes. 

In May, 1888, the legislature superseded in the office of Regis- 
trar of Deeds, the Hon. Samuel Chipman, who had reached the great 
age of ninety-eight years and was afflicted with blindness, and so 
was incapacitated from discharging the duties of his office. The act 
superseding him speaks of * ' his long and faithful service to the pub- 
lic", and provides that his successor shall pay him for the rest of his 
life, from the fees of the office, four hundred dollars. 

June 4, 1892, a fearful electrical storm passed over the province. 
In King's County it began about 9 o'clock in the evening and con- 
tinued almost an hour. The wind was unusually high, the lightning 
was the fiercest ever known in the county, and the rain, mingled 
with hail, was very heavy. As the effect of the storm, ornamental 
trees were uprooted, orchards were badly damaged, barns were 
blown down, the windows of houses were broken, and in some cases 
cattle were killed by falling timbers. 

Among notable persons who in recent times have visited the 
county, has been his excellency, Lord Stanley, Governor General of 
Canada, who with Lady Stanley, their four children, and suite, 
spent a short time in driving about Kentville, in October, 1890. In 
the absence of the Mayor, Judge Chipman, who was ill, Barclay 
Webster, M. P. P., Recorder, on behalf of the citizens of Kentville, 
presented his Excellency with a loyal address. The Town officers 
signing the address were: Judge John Pryor Chipman, Mayor; 
Barclay Webster, Recorder; James W. Ryan, Robert Silas Masters, 
Charles F. Cochran, William Yould, Robert Harrington, and Henry 
Lovett, Councillors ; William Eaton, Treasurer and Clerk. 



458 KING'S COUNTY 

POPULATION AT DIFFERENT PERIODS 
1763 

Horton Township, 154 Families; Cornwallis Township,, 128 Fam- 
ilies; Falmouth Township, 80 Families; Newport Township, 65 
Families. 

1764 
Cornwallis Township, 518 Persons; Falmouth Township, New- 
port Township, 670 Persons; Fort Edward (Windsor), 227 Persons. 
(Horton Township not reported.) 

1767 
Horton Township, Cornwallis Township, 1,361; Falmouth Town- 
ship, Newport Township, 814. In this year King's is said to have 
9 Negroes, 3 Indians, 4 Acadian French. 

1817 
King's County, 7,155. Hants County has 6,338. (Murdoch says: 
King's, 7,455; Hants, 6,685.) 

1827 
King's County, 10,208. At this period Hants County had 8,627. 
The population of King 's is distributed as follows : Cornwallis, 
4,404; Horton, 3,014; Aylesford, 1,055; part of Dalhousie Settle- 
ment, 43. 

1838 
King's County, 13.709. Of this population there were 1,595 
boys under fourteen, 1,473 girls under fourteen. 

1851 
King's County, 14,138, Of these, 185 were Negroes — 95 males, 
90 females. 

1861 
King's County, 18,731 ; Hants County had 17,460. 

1871 
King's County 21,510, distributed as follows: Canning, 2,898; 
Centreville, 2,334; KentviUe, 1,779; Lakeville, 1,717; Wolfville, 
1,697 ; Aylesford South, 1,571 ; Harbourville, 1,557 ; Aylesford North, 
1,530; Lower Horton, 1,519; Canard, 1,446; Gaspereau, 1,200; Ber- 
wick, 1,115; Somerset, 939; Dalhousie, 208. 



POPULATION 459 

1881 

King's County, 23,469. Hants County at the same period had 
23,359. The population of King's was distributed as follows: Can- 
ning, 3,260; Centreville 2,391; Kentville (and Canaan), 2,125; 
Aylesford South, 1,941; Wolfville (and environs), 1,880; Berwick, 
1,698 ; Lakeville, 1,644 ; Aylesford North, 1,594 ; Lower Horton, 1,580 ; 
Harbourville, 1,444 ; Canard, 1,429 ; Gaspereau, 1,217 ; Somerset, 967 ; 
Dalhousie, 298. 

1891 

King's County, 22,489 (4,312 Families). At this period Hants 
County had 22,052. The population of King's was distributed as 
follows : Canning, 2,989 ; Kentville, 2,526 ; Centreville, 2,192 ; Wolf- 
ville, 1,963 ; Aylesford South, 1,889 ; Berwick, 1,738 ; Aylesford North, 
1,637; Lower Horton, 1,455; Lakeville, 1,340; Canard, 1,296, Har- 
bourville, 1,252; Gaspereau, 996; Somerset, 931; Dalhousie, 285. 

1901 

King's County, 21,937. At this period Hants County had 20,056, 
Annapolis County had 18,842. The population of King's was dis- 
tributed as follows: Kentville (incorporated), 1,731; Wolfville, (in- 
corporated), 1,412; Canaan, 1,119; Ward 7, 1,085; Upper Dyke Vil- 
lage, 1,055 ; Centreville, 1,038 ; Berwick, 1,006 ; Somerset, 904 ; Grand 
Pre, 874 ; Cambridge, 844 ; Port Williams, 831 ; Dempsey Corner, 791 ; 
Sheffield's Mills, 768; Millville, 739; North Kingston, 726; Kings- 
port, 708 ; Lockhartville, 692 ; Brooklyn Street, 671 ; Kingston, 654 ; 
Canning, 639; Scots Bay, 544; Avonport, 507; Canard, 502; Green- 
wood, 502 ; Woodville, 501 ; Canada Creek, 467 ; Harbourville, 345 ; 
Dalhousie, 282. 

In 1901 the census gave 19,664 of the inhabitants of King's 
County as of British origin, 2,073, as having other origins. 
Of the latter, 1,613 were Germans, 279 French, 210 Negroes, 84 
Dutch, 27 Indians, 19 Scandinavians, 10 Jews, 4 Japanese and Chi- 
nese, 1 Italian, and 1 Swiss. 



460 KING'S COUNTY 

RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS AT DIFFERENT PERIODS 

1767 

In King's as its limits now are, there were 1,357 Protestants, 
4 Roman Catholics. In the part of King's that is now Hants there 
were 627 Protestants, 187 Roman Catholics, The latter were, of 
course, the French who were held in or employed near the fort at 



w musur. 


King's County 








1827 


1851 


1861 


1891 


1901 


Adventists 








319 


301 


Anglicans 


1,507 


? 


1,677 


2,437 


2,431 


Baptists 


4,454 


6,859 


9,488 


12,006 


11,438 


Bible Christians 






18 


20 




Congregationalists 




288 


195 


310 


250 


Disciples 






201 


155 


139 


Greek Church 










14 


Jews 










10 


Lutherans 






8 


21 


53 


Methodists 


1,080 


2,309 


3,130 


3,748 


3,868 


Presbyterians 


2,432 


? 


1,787 


1,562 


1,867 


Quakers 




17 


14 


1 




Reformed 




402 


65 


146 




Roman Catholics 


721 


1,143 


1,484 


1,399 


1,298 


Salvation Army 








130 


68 


Unitarians 








10 




Universalists 




101 


92 






Other Sects 


14 


758 


220 


78 


157 



It will be seen from the figures given above that in 1901 the Bap- 
tists numbered 11,438 in King's County, while the other denomina- 
tions together are reported as having but 12,357. In 1901 there were 
in the county 8 Anglican Churches, 33 Baptist, 10 Methodist, 7 Pres- 
byterian, 3 Roman Catholic, 8 Union, and 4 of various other sects. 



BIOGRAPHIES 



JAMES PILLIS AVERY, M. D. 

Dr. James Fillis Avery, son of Cap.t. Samuel and Mary (Fillis) 
Avery, was born in Horton, May 22, 1794, and for three years 
studied medicine with Dr. Almon in Halifax, He then went to 
Edinburgh, where he graduated in 1821. After graduation he spent 
six months in the Hospital of the Royal Guard at Paris, under the 
superintendence of the noted Baron Larrey, the first Napoleon's 
principal medical adviser. Dr. Avery practised medicine in Hali- 
fax and also founded there, in George Street, the noted drug firm, 
which for many years he personally conducted. From this firm, 
in time, sprang the firms of Messrs. Brown Brothers, and Brown 
and Webb. In later life he retired from business, and for some 
time travelled in Europe. He was an early governor of Dalhousie 
College, was an elder in St. Matthew's Presbyterian Church, on 
Pleasant Street, and was interested in many philanthropic insti- 
tutions. Among the business enterprises that he took substantial 
interest in was the Shubenacadie Canal, from Dartmouth to the 
Bay of Fundy. The first (and probably only) vessel that ever 
went through that canal, it is said, was called for him, The Avery. 
For many years, until his death, Dr. Avery's residence was on 
South Street, adjoining that of Mr. George Herbert Starr, who 
had married his niece, Rebecca (Allison) Sawers. Dr. Avery died 
unmarried, universally respected, Nov. 28, 1887, and was buried 
near his parents at Grand Pre. 



GEORGE EATON BARNABY, ESQ. 

George Eaton Barnaby, son of Worden and Lydia (Eaton) 
Barnaby, was born in Cornwallis, Aug. 23, 1815, married 
Mary E., daughter of David Dickie, and was for many 



462 KING'S COUNTY 

years a prominent man in the county. He once or twice 
contested elections for the legislature, he was active in 
educational matters, and for many years, until his death, he 
was Prothonotary for the county. Dr. Brechin writes of him : ' ' He 
was a man of more than ordinary ability and good judgment, a 
fluent speaker, a deep student, and an advanced thinker," His 
children were: Wentworth Eaton, m. (1) Desiah Norris, of Queen's 
county, (2) Mary J., dau. of William J. and Olivia (Barnaby) 
Sawyer; Annie M., m. to John Morton Barnaby, M. D. ; Matilda, 
m. to James Rockwell; Clarence, M. D. ; Nancy; Marietta; Regi- 
nald ; Ralph ; Jonathan Borden. 



JOHN WILLIAM BARSS, ESQ. 

John William Barss, shipbuilder and banker, one of the most 
successful men of business King's County has ever had, lived at 
Wolfville, where his ancestors, the De Wolfs, had lived. He was 
a son of Captain Joseph and Olivia (DeWolf) Barss, and was 
born at Liverpool, N. S., Sept. 7, 1812. His paternal grandfather 
was Joseph Barss, who came to Liverpool from Massachusetts, prob- 
ably in 1761. His mother's father was Judge Elisha DeWolf, son 
of Nathan DeWolf, the Horton grantee. After his marriage, Capt. 
Joseph Barss moved from Liverpool to the place a little to the 
east of Kentville that had formerly belonged to Benjamin Peck. 

His children were : Elisha ; Eliza Ann ; Amelia, m. to Harris, 

of Aylesford; James and Joseph, twins; John William, born Sept. 

7, 1812; Thomas; Mary, m. (1) to Mills, (2) to 

Freeman, of Liverpool; Simon Fitch, lived in Halifax and in 
Aylesford. Of these children, Thomas Barss lived for many years, 
and died, in Kentville. John William Barss married Lydia Kirt- 
land, daughter of Simon and Sophia Henrietta (DeWolf) Fitch, 
born June 16, 1814, and had at least six children, the chief repre- 
sentative of whom in the county in recent years has been his 
eldest son, Andrew DeWolf Barss, M. D., of Wolfville, who married 
the eldest daughter of the Rev. Edmund Albern Crawley, D. D., 



BIOGRAPHIES 463 

D. C. L. From 1836 to 1850 Mr. John William Barss was in busi- 
ness in Halifax, in the latter year he came to Wolfville. In 1879, 
when King's County became a Municipality, he was made the 
first Warden. For fifty-two years he was a deacon and one of the 
most influential men in the Horton Baptist Church and for thirty 
years was superintendent of the Sunday School of that church 
He died, highly respected. May 22, 1902. Two of his sons, Eev. 
Howard, and Rev. Walter Barss, became ministers of the Baptist 
denomination. Rev. Walter Barss, M. A., born January 17, 1859, 
graduated at Acadia in 1880, and at Rochester Theological Semi- 
nary afterward, and died young. 



WILLIAM BAXTER, M. D., M. P. P. 

Dr. William Baxter, M. P. P., one of the earliest physicians in 
the county, was distinctly a person of note. He was the son of 
Captain Simon Baxter, a Loyalist, of Alstead, N. H., who, on the 
25th of December, 1781, was granted leave by the town to remove 
with his family to St. John, N. B. He came to New Brunswick, 
but settled at Norton instead of in St. John, He married Prudence 
(perhaps Fox), and had eight children. Of these, Dr. WiUiam 
Baxter, born in 1760, came in 1782 to Cornwallis, where he re- 
mained for a short time. He then went back to New Brunswick, 
but from 1786 he lived permanently in Canard Street, Cornwallis, 
practising his profession all over the county. He died in Corn- 
wallis, Nov. 22, 1832, aged 72, and was buried in the Upper Canard 
burying ground, near what had been his home. For his two mar- 
riages, see the Baxter Family Sketch. His wives are buried near 
him. About 1803 he bought land on the North Mountain, from 
David Eaton, which possibly later led his son, John B. Baxter, to 
settle at "Baxter's Harbour," which place on the Bay Shore thus 
received its name. The leading contemporary physicians with 
Dr. Baxter, in the townships of Cornwallis and Horton, were Dr. 
Samuel Willoughby, and later Dr. Isaac Webster. It is said that 
often in the winter when the snow was too deep for horses or 



464 KING'S COUNTY 

sleighs Dr. Baxter was obliged to visit his patients on snow-shoes. 
He had many business interests besides his profession. It is said 
that he built at different times no less than seven vessels, and that 
he also owned saw-mills. He represented the town of Cornwallis 
from 1793 to 1799, Tradition has perpetuated a few of his terse 
remarks. It is told of him that once when a man was praising 
his great skill, as shown in the remarkable recovery of a patient 
from some severe sickness, be briefly said : * ' The Lord cures, and 
the doctor takes the fee!" At a certain time there came to the 
county another physician. Some one asked Dr. Baxter if the other 
was a good doctor. Dr. Baxter answered: "He may be, a pig 
may whistle, but his mouth is not formed for it." 



BENJAMIN BELCHER, M. P. P. 

Benjamin Belcher, probably of English parentage, was born at 
Gibraltar, July 17, 1743, and married in Cornwallis in 1763 or very 
early in 1764, Sarah, daughter of Stephen and Elizabeth (Clark) 
Post. He died in Cornwallis, May 14, 1802, aged 59. The names 
he gave his sons might seem to relate him to the family of Gregory 
Belcher, of Braintree, Mass., but the fact of his strong and steady 
attachment to the Church of England makes his English parentage 
almost certain. Exactly how early Mr. Belcher came to King's 
County we do not know, but he probably came about the time 
of his marriage. As late as 1797, however, he received a grant 
of land there of 606^^ acres, his property lying along the road 
afterward named for him, "Belcher Street." The boundaries of 
his farm on two sides were the Terry farm, and the cross road to 
Church Street. The present Belcher house on the "Belcher farm," 
which was built by his grandson, Clement Horton Belcher, stands 
slightly to the west of the house he built. Mr. Belcher was not 
only a land-owner, but a prosperous trader and owner of vessels. 
His store stood near his house, and the brigs he owned 
sailed between the "West Indies and "Terry's Creek," now Port 
Williams, carrying away cargoes of horses, potatoes, oats, fish, 



BIOGRAPHIES 465 

beef, pork, and lumber, and bringing back molasses, sugar, rum and 
some West Indian fruits. At the organization of St. John's 
Church, September 29, 1784 he was elected a warden, and in this 
oflSee he remained till his death. In 1785 he was elected to the 
legislature for Cornwallis, and this position he filled till 1799. 
Part of the Belcher property, including the original house, is now 
owned by Mr. Cyrus Ells. Like Col. John Burbidge, Mr. Belcher 
was a strong supporter of St. John's Church and his influence in 
the township at large was important and wide. 



CLEMENT HORTON BELCHER, ESQ. 

Clement Horton Belcher, son of Benjamin, Jr., and Sarah (Starr) 
Belcher, was born in Cornwallis, March 5, 1801, and died May 23, 
1869. He married, at Halifax, June 6, 1826, Mary Jane, dau. of 
Joseph and Mary (Gore) Starr, and had children: Mary Sophia; 
Sarah Clementina; Joseph, m. Mary E, Eitchie; Sarah Elizabeth, 
m. to Major Robert William Starr; Georgiana; George Herbert; 
Florence Lucy, m. to Charles Smith, Esq., of Kentville; Clement 
Horton, Jr. Mr, Belcher succeeded Mr. George Eaton as the only 
bookseller in Halifax, and he originated and long published the 
well-known ''Belcher's Farmer's Almanac." 



HON. CALEB RAND BILL 

Hon. Caleb Rand Bill, son of Asael and Mary (Rand) Bill, was 
born in Billtown, Cornwallis, Jan. 9, 1802, and married, Feb. 19, 
1826, Rebecca, dau. of William and Eunice (Beckwith) Cogswell. 
Mr. Bill was long in public life in Canada, as a member of the 
Provincial Parliament, and after the union of the provinces, July 
1, 1867, as one of the twelve senators of the Dominion. He died, 
respected and honoured. 



THE REV. INGRAHAM EBENEZER BILL, D. D. 

Rev. Ingraham Ebenezer Bill, T>. D., son of Asael and Mary 



466 KING'S COUNTY 

(Rand) Bill, was born in Cornwallis, Feb. 19, 1805, and "at the 
age of twenty-two" married Isabel Lyons. He began 
to preach in 1827, and March 3, 1829 was ordained at Nietaux, 
where he was pastor for twenty years. About the year 1844 he 
travelled over a large portion of the United States, collecting 
money for Acadia College, and about 1850 went to England on the 
same mission. He held pastorates at Fredericton, St. John, and St. 
Martin's, New Brunswick, started a ladies' boarding school at 
Nietaux, was for many years a governor of Acadia, edited the 
Christian Visitor, and wrote a book, called "Fifty Years with the 
Baptists." In 1881 Acadia University conferred on him the de- 
gree of D. D. He died at St. Martin's, N. B., Aug. 4, 1891, and was 
buried at St. John. He left sons: Rev. Ingram Ebenezer, Jr., Ed- 
ward Manning, and Caleb. 



WILLIAM COGSWELL BILL, M. P. P. 

William Cogswell Bill, only son of Hon. Caleb Rand Bill, was 
born at Billtown, Jan. 10, 1828, and died there. May 13, 1903. Like 
his father he had for many years great prominence in the county, 
and like his father he died greatly respected. He was for eight 
years a member of the local legislature, and in 1896 was a candi- 
date in the Conservative interest, for the Dominion House of Com- 
mons. He m. (1) in 1551, Ethelinda Dodge, (2) his 1st wife's 
sister, Arabella Dodge. Mr. Bill was an honoured and useful 
member of the Baptist denomination, for many years until his 
death serving as a governor of Acadia University. 



JOHN LEANDER BISHOP, M. D. 

John Leander Bishop, M. D., was the third child and second son 
of Ebenezer and Anne (Lewis) Bishop of Horton, and was born 
July 5, 1820. His paternal grandfather was Timothy and his 
grandmother Mrs. Mercy (Gore) Bishop (previously Mrs. Simon 
Newcomb), and his brothers and sisters were: Anne Lewis; Jesse 



BIOGRAPHIES 467 

Lewis; Augusta Maria Theresa (wife of Edward Young of Hali- 
fax) ; Edward Russell; Ann Sophia; and Nancy Desire. Dr. Bishop 
graduated at Acadia College in 1843, and afterwards graduated in 
medicine at the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia. For a time 
he practiced his profession in Philadelphia, but later he turned to 
literary pursuits. He compiled a history of American manufac- 
tures from the earliest Colonial period to the year 1861, and after 
the war, for many years until his death, was Chief of an important 
division in the Bureau of Statistics at Washington. In July, 1862, 
he entered the American Army as Acting Surgeon of the 6th Regt. 
Pennsylvania Reserves. He was afterwards promoted to full Sur- 
geon of the 7th, and went through all the battles of the Potomac, 
from Bull's Run to the Battle of the Wilderness. He died at New- 
ark, N. J., unmarried, Sept 23, 1868. He was a man of great sen- 
sitiveness, and was a poet of no mean worth. 



COL. SAMUEL HENRY BISHOP, M. P. P. 

Col. Samuel Henry Bishop, son of Capt. William and Jemima 
(Calkin) Bishop, born in Halifax, July 27, 1767, died in Wolfville, 
Aug. 5, 1839. He married (1), April 8, 1798, Anna Jacobs, of Hali- 
fax, born Sept. 10, 1776, died in Kentville, April 11, 1803, and was 
buried in Wolfville; (2) April 19, 1804, Bathsheba, daugh- 
ter of Simon and Bathsheba (Huntington) Fitch, and sister of 
Deacon Simon Fitch; born Dec. 14, 1780, died May 2, 
1857, at Parrsborough. She also is buried in Wolfville. 
Col. Bishop, was a J. P. from 1812 to 1830, a colonel in the militia, 
and a representative to the legislature, from Horton, 1812 — 1818, 
from the County of King's, 1820—1830. His children were: Rich- 
ard W. ; Anne ; Samuel Henry ; Mary Ann, married to Rufus De 
Wolf; Lewis Fitch; James Edward; Caroline Sophia, married 
March 20, 1835, to Thomas William DeWolf, of Parrsborough; 
Rachel Amelia, m. to Jacob Freeman DeWolf, of Parrsborough; 
William Frederick ; Simon A. R., died unmarried at Liverpool, Eng., 
Sep.t. 21, 1867 ; Lydia Rosina ; Albert Harding. 



468 KING'S COUNTY 

JUDGE GEORGE AUGUSTUS BLANCHARD 

Judge George Augustus Blanchard was born in Truro, N. S., 
Sept. 6, 1811, and died in Kentville, June 3, 1890. Judge Blanchard 
studied law in Pietou, in the office of his cousin, Hon. Jonathan 
Blanchard, Master of the Rolls, and later in the office of Hon. 
Judge James William Johnstone, in Halifax. After being admitted 
to the Bar he practised for a few years in Antigonish, and then 
in Halifax as a partner of Hon. Judge Alexander James. In 
1856 he was appointed Judge of Probate for King's, and removed 
to Kentville. About 1875 he was appointed Judge for the Counties 
of King's, Hants, and Colchester, and in this responsible position 
he died. He was a devoted member of the Presbyterian Church, 
and for many years an elder in St. Paul's, Kentville. Judge 
Blanchard is remembered as an upright and able lawyer and 
judge, and a philanthropic and deeply religious man. 



ASAEL BILL BLIGH, ESQ. 

Asael Bill Bligh, youngest son of Thomas and Margaret (Foote) 
Bligh, was born in Cornwallis, May 20, 1827, and died Sept. 20, 
1888. In company with his wife's cousin, William Burgess, of 
Lakeville, he was for many years a prominent merchant and ship- 
builder, the firm of which he was a member being ''Burgess and 
Bligh." This firm carried on business both at Lakeville and at 
Black Rock, Mr. Burgess managing the Lakeville store, and Mr. 
Bligh the Black Rock store. At the latter place the firm built 
brigs, brigatines, and schooners, and before the D. A. Railway was 
started had a large shipping trade with the United States. The 
firm dissolved in 1859, in that year the two former members of it 
running against each other for a seat in the N. S. Legislature. Mr. 
Burgess' colleague in this election was Dr. Chipman, and these 
two candidates supported the Liberal leader, Howe. Mr. Bligh 's 
colleague was Dr. Charles Cottnam Hamilton, and these candi- 
dates supported the Conservative leader. Judge Johnstone. In the 
end, Chipman and Burgess were elected, the parliament in which 



BIOGRAPHIES 469 

they sat, lasting from 1859 to 1863. In December, 1857, Mr. Bligh 
married Elizabeth Ann Coleman, of Lakeville, her parents being 
John Robinson Coleman and Rebecca Nesbit (dau. of William Nes- 
bit, a Scottish settler in King's, and his wife Dickey) Cole- 
man, and in 1863 removed to Halifax, where in company with his 
nephew, Howard Bligh, under the firm name of "A. B. Bligh and 
Co.," he did business until Dec, 1878, when he was appointed Ship- 
ping Master for the Port of Halifax, a position he held till his 
death, and in which he was succeeded by his nephew, Howard 
Bligh. His children were: Frederick Pennington Bligh, Barrister, 
of Halifax; and Margaret Rebecca Bligh. 



LIEUT. HAROLD LOTHROP BORDEN 

Lieut. Harold Lothrop Borden, a gallant young officer, who lost 
his life in South Africa in 1900, was the only son of Hon. Sir Fred- 
erick William Borden, K. C. M. G., and his wife Julia M. (Clarke). 
He was born at Canning, May 23, 1876, graduated B. A. at Mount 
Allison University in 1897, and when he volunteered for South 
Africa had entered on his third year in medicine at McGill Univer- 
sity. His military career began in 1893, when he entered the King 's 
Canadian Hussars. In 1897, as a member of the Queen's Diamond 
Jubilee Contingent he received the Jubilee Medal. By 1899 he had 
risen to Major in command of his corps. At the outbreak of the 
South African war he volunteered his services, and later, having 
surrendered his rank as Major he was appointed to a lieutenancy in 
the Second Contingent of the Royal Canadian Dragoons. Before 
leaving home he said, "I will not send those under me anywhere I 
will not go myself," and faithfully he kept his word. Lord Roberts, 
Commander-in-Chief of the War, reported his death substantially 
as follows: "Lieut. Borden was killed while gallantly leading his 
men in a counter attack upon the enemy's flank at the critical 
juncture of an assault upon our position. He had twice before been 
brought to my notice in despatches for gallant and intrepid con- 
duct. " The two occasions referred to were specially reported to 



470 KING'S COUNTY 

the Commander-in-Chief, July 2, 1900, in a list of names now in the 
War Office, as follows: "Lieut. H. L. Borden, gallant conduct in 
swimming the Vet Eiver under fire, 5th May, and in capturing 
some of the enemy's wagons on 30th May." 

In a speech in the House of Lords on the 19th of July, 1900, the 
Marquess of Lansdowne, Secretary of State for War, said : 

"The war which is now going on in South Africa will be ever 
memorable as that in which for the first time the troops of this 
country and those of our great colonies have fought side by side, 
and I do not think we can overrate the deep impression which has 
been produced, not only upon the people of the United Kingdom, 
not only upon the people of the British Empire, but upon all parts 
of the world, by the exhibition of colonial patriotism and loyalty, 
which we have lately witnessed. Throughout these difficult and 
arduous operations, during the initial stages when success seemed 
to come to us with slow and halting steps, and later, when our 
progress has been more rapid and satisfactory, the colonial troops 
have borne a distinguished and honourable share in the hardships 
and in the dangers of war. My Lords, as I have mentioned this, 
I am impelled to refer to a telegram which we all of us have read 
from Lord Roberts two days ago, in which he mentions how in a re- 
cent hard-fought action beyond Pretoria, two young Canadian offi- 
cers, when leading their men in a counter-attack on the enemy's 
flank at a critical juncture of an important engagement lost their 
lives, one of them being the only son of the Canadian Minister of 
Militia and Defence, a young officer whom Lord Roberts describes 
as having twice before been brought to his notice in despatches for 
gallant and intrepid conduct. When we think who was the writer 
of that telegram, I think we may say that no more touching tribute 
could have been paid to the memory of these brave young represen- 
tatives of our Colonial forces. ' ' 

The following letter from the Secretary of the late Queen Vic- 
toria was received by Hon. Sir Frederick Borden shortly after his 
son's death: 



BIOGRAPHIES 471 

''Osborne, July 28, 1900. 
"Dear Sir: 

"I am commanded by the Queen to say that Her Majesty would 
like to have a photograph of your son, the late Lieut. H. Borden, 
who was killed while fighting so gallantly with the Canadian 
Mounted Rifles in South Africa. 

"The Queen deplores the death of so brave and promising a 
young officer and desires me to convey to you the expression of 
her deep sympathy with you in the sad loss you have suffered by 
his death. 

"The Queen read with feelings of admiration and pride the ac- 
count of how your son gave his life in devoted and self-sacrificing 
service to his Sovereign and Empire. 

"I am, Sir, yours very truly, 

"FITZ PONSONBY. 
"The Honble. F. Borden." 

A monument to Lieut. Harold Lothrop Borden was unveiled at 
Canning, King's County, Sept. 23, 1903, with the following in- 
scription : 

TO COMMEMORATE THE PATRIOTISM AND COURAGE OF 
LIEUT. HAROLD LOTHROP BORDEN 

who was killed at Witport, South Africa, July 16th, 1900, while 
leading his men to victory. 

(erected by friends in King's County and elsewhere) 

The only son of the Honourable Sir Frederick W. Borden, K. C. M. 
G., Minister of Militia and Defence, and Julia M. his wife, daugh- 
ter of the late John H. Clarke, Esq., he was born at Canning, May 
23, 1876. He was a graduate in Arts of Mount Allison University 
'97 and had entered his third year in Medicine at McGill University, 
Beginning his military career as a trooper in the Kings Canadian 
Hussars in 1893 he earned rapid promotion and was appointed 
Major in command in 1899. As a member of the Queen's Diamond 



472 KING'S COUNTY 

Jubilee Contingent in 1897 he received the Jubilee Medal, At the 
outbreak of the war he volunteered his services and later having 
surrendered his rank as Major was appointed to a Lieutenancy in 
the Royal Canadian Dragoons 2nd. Contingent. Before leaving 
home he said : * ' I will not send those under me anywhere I wiU not 
go myself. ' ' How faithfully he kept his word ! 

Lord Roberts, Commander in Chief, reported his death sub- 
stantially as follows: ** Lieut. Borden was killed while gallantly 
leading his men in a counter attack upon the enemy's flank, at the 
critical juncture of an assault upon our position. He had twice be- 
fore been brought to my notice in despatches for gallant and in- 
trepid conduct." The two occasions referred to were specially re- 
ported to the Commander in Chief July 2d., 1900, in a list of names 
now in the War Office as follows: "Lieut. H. L. Borden, gallant 
conduct in swimming the Vet River under fire 5th May and in cap- 
turing some of the enemy's wagons on 30th May, 

SEMPER HONOR NOMENQUE TUUM LAUDESQUE MANE- 
BUNT. 



JONATHAN BORDEN, M. D. 

Dr. Jonathan Borden was long one of the most important physi- 
cians in the county but unfortunately we have no facts concerning 
him other than are found in the Borden Family Sketch. He was 
the father of Hon. Sir Frederick Borden, K. C. M. G. 



HON. JUDGE GEORGE WHEELOCK BURBroGE, D. 0. L. 

His Honor, the late George Wheelock Burbidge, D, C, L., Judge 
of the Exchequer Court of Canada, was born in Cornwallis, Feb. 
6, 1847. He was the third son of Arnold Shaw and Lydia Amelia 
(Eaton) Burbidge, his father being a son of Henry Burbidge, and 
his mother a daughter of David and Susannah (Strong) Eaton. 
Judge Burbidge was graduated at Mt. Allison College, Sackville, 



BIOGRAPHIES 473 

N. B., in 1867, and received his M. A. from that University in 1870. 
In 1872 he was called to the New Brunswick Bar, and after that 
for a few years he practised in St. John. From 1876 to 1877 he 
was Secretary to the Commission for the Consolidation of the Laws 
of New Brunswick; from 1882 to 1887 he was Deputy Minister 
of Justice for the Dominion; in 1883 he was Commissioner for the 
Consolidation and Revision of the Statutes of Canada; in 1885 the 
Marquis of Lansdowne created him a Queen's Counsel; in 1887 
he was called to the Ontario Bar. The same year he was appointed 
a Judge of the Exchequer Court of Canada. He also served as a 
Civil Service Commissioner, a member of the Board of Arbitration 
constituted to determine disputed matters of account between Can- 
ada and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, and a Commissioner 
appointed by the Government of British Columbia to inquire into 
certain matters in connection with the Nakusp and Slocan R. R. 
As Deputy Minister of Justice, in 1885 he was entrusted with the 
supervision of the trial of Riel and other state prisoners. He argued 
the Liquor License Act before the Supreme Court of Canada, and 
conducted the appeal against the decision of the Court before the 
Privy Council in England. From his Alma Mater he received the 
honorary degree of D. C. L. in 1888. Judge Burbidge married in 
1873 Alice E., third daughter of H. Maxwell, Esq., of St. John, 
N, B. He was a member of the Church of England. His death 
occurred at Ottawa February 18, 1908. 



COL. JOHN BURBroOE, M. P. P. 

One of the most important persons in the history of the county 
is Col. John Burbidge, M. P. P., who spent a great part of his long, 
useful life in Cornwallis, and there attained wide influence. Col. 
Burbidge was a native of Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, and was born 
in 1716, or '17. In 1749 he came to Halifax with the first English 
settlers, and he is said to have been the first of these to erect in 
the town a frame house. He was a member for Hali- 
fax of the First, Second, and Third Assemblies that met 



474 KING'S COUNTY 

in the Province, but sometime between 1761 and '65 
he removed to Cornwallis, where in the former year he had 
received a grant of a share and a half of land. In 1764, he was made 
the first Registrar (or Deputy Registrar, as this office was then 
called) of Deeds for Cornwallis, and this office he held till he died. 
In the Fourth Assembly, from 1765 to 1770, he represented Corn- 
wallis. "When he died he was the oldest militia officer, the oldest 
Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and the oldest magistrate 
in the Province." His house was situated half way between Town 
Hot and the present Port Williams; and the first St. John's 
Church, and the old Fox Hill Churchyard, where he sleeps, were 
originally on his land. He was a public spirited man, and in the 
earliest development of the county by English-speaking people had 
a foremost part. His loyalty to the Anglican Church was unfailing, 
and of the parish of St. John's, Cornwallis, he was long the most 
important man. The opening words of St. John's Parish Register 
are: "Historical Memorandums taken by John Burbidge, Esquire, 
during his lifetime and continued by him after being elected 
Church Warden of the Church of St. John's at Cornwallis in King's 
County, in the Province of Nova Scotia." Among later entries in 
the Register, stands the following: "In the year 1770 John Bur- 
bidge and William Best, Esquires, at their own expense, built a 
small church in said Cornwallis for the more decent and con- 
venient performance of Divine Service." The following appears 
in the Register after Mr. Burbidge 's death: "On the 11th of 
March, 1812, John Burbidge, Esquire, the great patron of the Church 
in King's County for upward of fifty years, departed this life, 
and on the 14th his remains were interred at the old Church, at- 
tended by all the magistrates, the militia officers in their uniforms, 
and the principal inhabitants of the County." He was still a 
colonel in the militia, and it was desired by the commanding officer 
that his remains should be interred with military honours. This 
offer, however, his relatives declined. The newspaper notice of 
his death reads: 



BIOGRAPHIES 475 

''Died. 
"At Cornwallis ou the 11th instant, John Burbidge, Esquire, in the 
95th year of his age. A man that was revered and loved by all 
who knew him, for his piety, integrity, and benevolence. He re- 
tained to the last a sound understanding and was waiting with 
cheerful resignation for the moment of his departure from this 
world. Suitable to an uniform life of piety and virtue was the 
manner of his death. He retired to bed in the evening free from 
pain and during the night the servant of God fell asleep in the 
Lord." 

In a letter to the author, the late Mr. Justice Burbidge, of Ot- 
tawa, writes of Col. John Burbidge : ' ' Another matter of historical 
interest as showing the state of society in Nova Scotia more than a 
hundred years ago, with which no doubt you are familiar, is the 
fact that a number of the people were owners of slaves. There 
are entries of the baptism of some of these slaves in the Parish 
Record to which I have referred; and deeds of manumission, sub- 
ject to certain specified conditions, are to be found in the Regis- 
try of Deeds. Those from John Burbidge and his nephew, Henry 
Burbidge, are dated the 25th of December, 1790. John Burbidge 
died possessed of considerable property, real and personal, for 
those times; and his will is a rather long document. He left his 
property mainly to his four nephews, Henry, Elias, James, and 
John, to other members of his family, and to St. John's Church." 
Col. Burbidge married first, probably before he left England, Eliz- 
abeth , who died in Cornwallis early in 1775, aged 55. He 

married, second, in Halifax, October 14, 1775, Mrs. Rebecca (Dud- 
ley) Gerrish, born in Boston, May 28, 1726, died in Concord, N. H., 
January 30, 1809, buried at Fox Hill, Cornwallis, February 4, 1809. 
So far as is known, he had no children by either wife. 

Concerning the Gerrish brothers, of Halifax, the widow of one 
of whom, Hon. Benjamin Gerrish, Col. Burbidge married, a few 
words may properly be said. Among Massachusetts men who 
settled early in Halifax were members of the well-known related 
families of Gerrish, Gray, and Green. Of the Gerrish family, were 



476 KING'S COUNTY 

the brothers, members of the Council, Hon, Joseph, and Hon. Ben- 
jamin Gerrish, sons of Capt. John and Sarah (Hobbs) Gerrish 
of Boston, whose children were: Anna; Richard; Sarah; Mar- 
garet; "William; Joseph, born Sept. 8, 1709; Sarah; Nathaniel and 
William, twins; and Benjamin, born Oct. 19, 1717. Hon. Joseph 
Gerrish enlisted in the Louisburg expedition, and later settled in 
Halifax, where he became naval storekeeper. He married (1) 
Mary Brenton of Newport (aunt of Sir Brenton Halliburton), (2) 
in Halifax, Mary Cradock, of Boston, and had two daughters, one 
of whom became the wife of Joseph Gray, and the mother of Rev. 
Benjamin Gerrish Gray. The Hon. Benjamin Gerrish was a prom- 
inent merchant in Halifax, and senior partner of the firm of 
"Gerrish and Gray." He married in Boston, Rebecca, born 
May 28, 1726, dau. of Hon. William and Elizabeth (Davenport) 
Dudley, who bore him no children. He made his will 
(recorded in Boston) in 1771, and died at Southampton, 
England, May 6, 1772. Mrs. Rebecca (Dudley) Gerrish — Bur- 
bidge's youngest sister, Ann, was married June 2, 1760, to John 
Lovell, of Boston, probably a son of the noted Boston Tory school- 
master, John Lovell, who came with Howe's fleet to Halifax, 
and whose portrait was painted by Smybert. The Dudley Geneal- 
ogy says that the younger John Lovell was also "a Royalist, and 
went to Nova Scotia." John and Ann (Dudley) Lovell had three 

children: Nancy, m, to Brown, of Boston; Mary, m. to 

Elias Burbidge of Cornwallis; John, who in 1810 lived at Thomp- 
son, Conn. 



PROFESSOR ISAAC CHIPMAN, M. A. 

Professor Isaac Chipman, son of Rev. William and Mary Mc- 
Gowan (Dickie) Chipman, was born in Annapolis County, July 17, 
1817, and drowned in Minas Basin, June 7, 1852. He was gradu- 
ated from Waterville College (now Colby University), Waterville, 
Me., in 1839. The same year he returned to Nova Scotia and be- 
came Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Acadia 



BIOGRAPHIES 477 

College. This position he held until his death. From the spring 
of 1850 to that of 1851, says Rev. Dr. Saunders, *'with rock like 
firmness and heroic courage he took the whole burden (of the 
college) on his shoulders" On the 7th of June, 1852, he and a 
small party, comprising among others the Rev. Edward D. Very, 
M. A., formerly of Salem, Mass., and Benjamin Rand, of Cornwallis, 
a student in the college, were returning across the Basin from 
gathering minerals at Blomidon. A squall arising the whole party 
was drowned, the sad accident occasioning the greatest sorrow 
throughout the county. 



JUDGE JARED INGERSOLL CHIPMAN 

Jared Ingersoll Chipman, born in Cornwallis, May 22, 1788, was 
the sixth and youngest son of John Chipman (second son of 
Handley Chipman) and his wife, Eunice, dau. of Col. Charles Dick- 
son. His sister Elizabeth was m. to Sherman Burbidge of Corn- 
wallis, and his sister Eunice to David Whidden of Cornwallis. He 
married, probably in 1814, Mary Sawyer of Halifax, and had 
children : James Blowers ; Ann Eliza ; Terson ; Jared ; Francis ; Har- 
riet; John R. U. ; Ferguson. He died June 3, 1832. Judge Chip- 
man was a well-known lawyer, living at Shelburne and in Halifax. 
He was at one time Sheriff of Halifax County, was President of the 
Sessions for the Eastern District of Nova Scotia, and was for 
many years a Judge of the Nova Scotia Court of Common Pleas. 



HON. SAIVTUEL CHIPMAN, M. E. C, M. L. C, M. P. P. 

Hon Samuel Chipman, third son of William Allen (M. P. P.) 
and Ann (Osborn) Chipman, was born in Cornwallis, Oct, 18, 1790, 
and died in Cornwallis, at the great age of a hundred and one, Nov. 
10, 1891. In 1830 he was elected to the Legislature, and as a 
representative for King's he served from 1830 to 1837, from 1837 
to 1841, and from 1841 to 1844. For the town of Cornwallis he 
served from 1851 to 1855, and from 1855 to 1860. For the North 



478 KING'S COUNTY 

Division of King's he served from 1860 to 1863. From 1855 to 
1857 he was a member of the Executive Council of the Province, 
as Financial Secretary, and from 1863 to 1870 a member of the 
Legislative Council. From 1870 to 1887 he was Registrar of Deeds 
for Cornwallis, when he retired on a pension. He was also a 
colonel in the militia, and active in all public affairs. In 1848 he 
built the barque Cornwallis. Until within a short time of his 
death his mind was clear and his memory accurate, but for five 
years before he died he was blind. He married (1) May 11, 1815, 
Elizabeth, dau. of Col. Henry and Sarah (Pineo) Gesner, born in 
1793, died in 1833; (2) Dec. 8, 1841, Jessie W., dau. of Thomas and 
Jessie Hardy (both born in Scotland). By his first marriage he had 
children : Ann, born Dec. 14, 1816, m. in 1837 to Dr. John Primrose ; 
"William Allen, born June 30, 1818, died in 1863; Sarah Rebecca, 
born Sept. 9, 1820, married in 1841, to Samuel I. Sharp; Elizabeth 
Adelaide, b. Aug. 22, 1830, m. in 1848 to John E. Wilder, of 
Boston. By his second marriage he had: Jessie Frances, born 
Jan. 24, 1843 ; John Russell, born July 17, 1845 ; Mary ; Samuel and 
Isaac, twins. 



THE REV. THOMAS HANDLEY CHIPMAN 
The Rev. Thomas Handley Chipman, fourth son of Handley 
Chipman, the Cornwallis grantee, was bom in Newport, R. I., Jan. 
17, 1756. He married (1) in 1776, in Cornwallis, Mary, only dau. 
of John Huston of Cornwallis, (2) in Oct., 1786, Jane Harding of 
Boston, Mass., (3) in Sept., 1821, Mary Briggs of Portland, Me., 
(4) Mary Dunn. By his 1st marriage he had four children, by his 
2nd, seven, Mr. Chipman was not a member of the Cornwallis 
New Light Congregationist Church, though he was converted in 
Cornwallis under Rev. Henry AUine's preaching. He was baptized 
by the Rev. Nicholas Pearson, in Horton, in 1779, and must soon 
have made up his mind to preach, for in 1782 he was ordained in 
Annapolis county, by Henry Alline and John Payzant, the only 
other New Light ministers then in the province. By 1800 his 



BIOGRAPHIES 479 

church in Annapolis had become frankly a Baptist church. In 
1809 he became pastor of the Baptist church in Nictaux, and there, 
October 11, 1830, he died. 



THE REV. WILLIAM CHIPMAN 

The Kev. William Chipman (Wm. Allen, Handley) was born in 
Annapolis, Nov. 29, 1781, and March 29, 1829, was ordained pastor 
of the 2nd Baptist church of Cornwallis, organized at Berwick (the 
region then being called Pleasant Valley) in 1828. July 14, 1865, 
Mr. Chipman died. He married (1) Feb. 24, 1803, Mary McGrOwan, 
daughter of Matthew Dickey, (2) May 24, 1827, Eliza Ann, daugh- 
ter of Holmes and Elizabeth (Andrews) Chipman, and by these 
two marriages had twenty-one children, of whom William Henry 
Chipman, M. P., of Cornwallis, was the third, and Judge John Pryor 
Chipman, and Holmes Samuel Chipman, also mentioned in this 
book were respectively the 20th and 21st. Before entering the 
ministry, Mr. Chipman lived in Annapolis County, where he held 
local civic offices, and was prominent in matters connected with 
the Baptist Church, in which he was a deacon. 



WILLIAM ALLEN CHIPMAN, M. P. P. 

William Allen Chipman, M. P. P., born in Newport, E. I., Nov. 
8, 1757, was long one of the most conspicuous public men of King's 
County. He was a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, Town 
Clerk for Cornwallis, and from 1799 to 1806 represented the county 
in the legislature. From 1812 to 1818 he represented the town of 
Cornwallis. He died aged about 85. 



WILLIAM HENRY CHIPMAN, M. P. 

William Henry Chipman, M. P., second son of Eev. William and 
Mary McGowan (Dickie) Chipman, was born in Annapolis, N. S., 
Nov. 3, 1807, and died in Ottawa, Apr. 10, 1870. He was a prominent 



480 KING'S COUNTY 

merchant and land-owner in Cornwallis, and was long conspicuous 
in public affairs. On the creation of the Dominion of Canada, 
in 1867, he was elected the first representative for King's County 
to the Dominion Assembly. In 1870, however, two years before 
the Assembly was dissolved, he suddenly died in Ottawa, his son, 
Col, Leverett de Veber Chipman, then being elected by acclamation 
in his place. Mr. Chipman was also long Registrar of Probate 
for King's. He married Jan. 6, 1831, Sophia Araminta, dau, of 
James and Elizabeth (Beckwith) Cogswell, born Oct. 5, 1807, died 
June 11, 1878. 



ZACHARIAH CHIPMAN, ESQ. 

Zachariah Chipman, eighth son of Holmes and Elizabeth (An- 
drews) Chipman, was born in Cornwallis, April 18, 1814, and for 
many years till his death was a prominent merchant in St. Stephen, 
New Brunswick. He married, Sept. 15, 1842, Mary Elizabeth, dau. 
of William and Amelia (Fitch) DeWolf, of Wolfville, born April 
30, 1819, and had nine children: Alice, bom Dec. 10, 1843, married 
Oct. 27, 1867, as his second wife, to Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley; 
Lucy Florence, born Nov. 10, 1845, married to Owen Jones; Anna 
Fairbanks, born Oct. 7, 1847, married to F. Toller, of Ottawa ; Wil- 
liam Henry, born Feb. 18, 1850, died young; Kate Andrews, born 
March 2, 1852, died young; Laura Edith, born May 20, 1854, mar- 
ried to W. H, Howland, of Toronto ; John De Wolf, born April 10, 
1856; Henry Havelock, born April 23, 1858, died young; Eliza- 
beth Thompson, born Feb. 19, 1860, died young. Zachariah Chip- 
man died Oct. 16, 1883, aged 69. 



ALFRED CHIPMAN COGSWELL, D. D. S. 

Alfred Chipman Cogswell, son of Winckworth Allen and Caro- 
line Eliza (Barnaby) Cogswell, was born in Upper Dyke village, 
Cornwallis, July 17, 1834. He married, Oct. 8, 1858, Sarah A., dau. 
of Col. Oliver and Sarah A. Parker, born in Bangor, Me., Oct. 10, 



BIOGRAPHIES 481 

1830, and had two sons. His residence for many years was in Hali- 
fax and in Dartmouth. Dr. Cogswell studied for two years at Acadia 
College, and then on account of ill health abandoned his college 
course. His studies in dentistry were later pursued in Portland, 
Me., and his first practice was in Wakefield, Mass. In 1859 he re- 
moved to Halifax, N, S., where he formed a partnership with Dr. 
Lawrence E. Van Buskirk. Some years later he graduated as D. D. S. 
at the College of Dentistry in Philadelphia. For many years 
Dr. Cogswell was a successful and skillful practitioner in Halifax, 
where he was also an elder in St. Matthew's Presbyterian Church. 
The younger of his sons, Arthur W., in 1884 received the degree of 
M. D., and was appointed Surgeon of the Halifax Provincial and 
City Hospital. 



HON. HENRY HEZEKIAH COGSWELL, M. L. 0. 

Hon, Henry Hezekiah Cogswell, M. L. C, founder of the Cogswell 
family of Halifax, one of the most important men King's County has 
produced, was born in Cornwallis, April 12, 1776, was graduated at 
King's College, Windsor, and afterward studied law and became 
associated in practice with Hon. Richard John Uniacke in Halifax. 
In 1812 he was appointed Deputy Provincial Secretary, and in 1825, 
in conjunction with Samuel Cunard, John Clark, Joseph Allison, 
William Pryor, James Tobin, Enos Collins, and Martin Gay Black, 
he established the first joint-stock banking house in Halifax. In this 
important enterprise he seems to have been the first mover, and 
when the bank was founded he was made its first president. In 1818 
he was returned to the Assembly for the town of Halifax, in 1824 
he was Registrar in the Court of Chancery, and in 1831 he was 
made a member of the Legislative Council, He was interested in 
all public affairs, especially in the project of a railway from Hali- 
fax to Quebec, concerning which scheme he published a pamphlet 
in 1852. 

Hon. Henry Hezekiah Cogswell was a son of Mason and Lydia 
(Huntington) Cogswell, of Cornwallis, and was born in Cornwallis, 



482 KING'S COUNTY 

Apr. 12, 1776. He married in "Windsor, probably in 1803 or '04, Isa- 
bella, dau. or Rev. William and Isabella (Colquhoun) Ellis, born in 
Windsor in 1779, died in Halifax, May 7, 1850. Mr. Cogswell died at 
his residence in Argyle Street, Halifax, Nov. 9, 1854, and was buried 
in Camp Hill Cemetery. He had in all 10 children, sketches of 
two of whom will be found in the Personal Sketches in this book. 
His youngest child, James Colquhoun Cogswell, Barrister, born 
Dee. 9, 1820, married Nov. 12, 1849, Sopjiia Louisa, dau. of Hon. 
Mather Byles and Sophia Almon, born Aug. 5, 1827, and had four 
children. He was a brilliant lawyer and ''held an able and 
ready pen." As wiU be seen by the Cogswell Family Sketch in 
this book, Hon. H. H. Cogswell had brothers: William, who mar- 
ried (1) Elizabeth Beekwith, (2) Eunice Eaton; John, who married 
Ruth Ann Eaton; Oliver, who m. Sarah Ann Allison, and sisters: 
Eunice, wife of Charles Chipman; and Anne, wife of Hon, John 
Morton. 



MISS ISABELLA BINNEY COGSWELL 

One of the most distinguished women Nova Scotia has ever had 
was Miss Isabella Binney Cogswell, of Halifax, daughter of the 
Hon. Henry Hezekiah Cogswell, a Cornwallis born man. Miss 
Cogswell inherited what for Nova Scotia was great wealth, and 
her whole life was devoted to charitable works. She was born 
in Halifax, July 6, 1819, and died December 6, 1874. A tablet on 
the walls of St. Paul's Church, where she always worshipped, bears 
the following inscription: "To the Memory of Isabella Binney 
Cogswell, Daughter of the late Honourable Hezekiah Cogswell, 
who entered into her rest December 6, 1874, aged 55 years. Con- 
verted in Early Life Under the Ministry of Her Beloved Brother 
she Devoted Herself to the Service of her Lord with Remarkable 
Zeal and Cheerfulness. In Labours Most Abundant, there was 
Scarcely a Good Work in Connection with the Parish of St. Paul, 
or with the City at Large in Which she Did not Engage. The 
Last Act of Her Useful Career was that of Ministering For Many 



BIOGRAPHIES 48S 

Nights to the Sick and Dying, when Her Overtasked Strength 
Yielded to the Long Continued Strain." 



THE REV. WILLIAM COGSWELL, M. A. 

The Rev. William Cogswell, M. A., a devoted priest of the Angli- 
can Church, was the son of Hon. Henry Hezekiah and Isabella 
(Ellis) Cogswell, and was born in Halifax in 1809. He married, 
probably in 1839, Eleanor, dau. of Hon. Andrew and Marianne 
(von Geyer) Belcher, of Halifax, born March 2, 1813, who after his 
death became the wife of Major John Claridge Burmester. He dy- 
ing, she lived for many years in Halifax a widow for the second 
time. By his marriage Rev, "William Cogswell had children: Mary 
Kate, married to Col. Francis Duncan, R. A. ; Rev. William Henry 
Lawrence, who was a clergyman in England, and who married 
Alicia Harriet, daughter of the Hon. Andrew Mitchell and Eliza- 
beth Uniacke, born in Halifax, Jan. 21, 1846 ; and Emily. The un- 
affected piety and Christ-like devotion of Rev. William Cogswell 
have never been forgotten in Halifax, where he ministered as 
curate of St. Paul's Parish. On the walls of the mother Anglican 
church of Nova Scotia is a tablet to his memory which bears the 
following feeling inscription: "Erected to the Memory of The 
Reverend William Cogswell, A. M., Who departed this life on the 
5th day of June, A. D., 1847, Aged 37 years. This Faithful Minis- 
ter of the Gospel was Born, Baptized, Confirmed, and Admitted 
to Holy Orders in this Parish. Educated in King's College, Wind- 
sor, He was Curate of St. Paul's Parish upwards of Fourteen 
Years — the Whole Term of his Ministry. He was a Most Zealous 
Labourer in the Lord's Vineyard. As the sole foundation of every 
sinner's hope of salvation, as the only channel through which par- 
don and peace could be extended to any of our fallen race, by the 
eloquence of his preaching and the purity of his life, he enforced 
and exemplified the doctrine and the fruits of faith. No monument 
is required to perpetuate his memory in the minds of those who 
had the happiness to know and the privilege to hear him; but the 



484 KING'S COUNTY 

inhabitants of the parish feel it a duty to record their sense of the 
value of his services while living and their grief for their loss by 
his death." 



THE REV. JOHN MOCKETT CRAMP, D. D. 

The Rev. John Mockett Cramp, D. D., was born at St. Peter's, in 
the Isle of Thanet, in 1791, educated at Stepney College, London, 
and ordained to the Baptist ministry in 1818. In 1844 he removed 
to Canada as President of the Baptist College in Montreal, In 1851 
he became President of Acadia College and that office he finally left 
in 1869. His influence on his students was intellectually stimulat- 
ing, and he played an important part in education in his adopted 
province. He was the author of many books and monographs, a list 
of which will be found in AUibone's Dictionary of Authors. He 
died in 1881. His eldest daughter became the wife of Stephen Sel- 
den, of Halifax, another daughter was married to Rev. Thomas A. 
Higgins, D. D., and one daughter remained unmarried. 



COL. JONATHAN CRANE, M. P. P. 

Col. Jonathan Crane, M. P. P., born in Lebanon, Conn., in 1750, 
married in Horton, Rebecca, daughter of Joseph Allison. He was 
a son of Silas Crane, one of the Horton grantees, and a younger 
brother of Silas, Jr., also a grantee. His sister, Chloe, born Sept. 
24, 1745, was married to James Noble Shannon, of Halifax. Col. 
Crane was a magistrate and colonel in the militia, and represented 
both the town of Horton and the county of Kings. He was a man 
of marked individuality and was long one of the most influential 
men in the county. In his will he bequeathed land to his sons, 
James Noble, William, and Silas Hibbert; and to his daughters, 
Nancy, wife of Sherman Denison, and Rebecca, wife of Samuel 
Black. On the occasion of the historic journey through Horton to 
Annapolis, of H. R. H., the Duke of Kent, Col. Crane, it is said, like 
Judge Elisha DeWolf, further west, had the honour of entertaining 



BIOGRAPHIES 485 

the Prince. Jonathan Crane died at Grand Pre in August, 1820; 
his wife died in 1841. Col. Crane represented the county con- 
tinuously from 1785 to 1818 ; the town of Horton from 1818 to 1820. 
In 1820 he was elected to represent Cornwallis, but before the first 
legislative session began he died. 



THE REV. EDMUND ALBERN CRAWLEY, D. D., D. C. L. 

One of the truest gentlemen the American continent has ever 
known was Dr. Edmund Albern Crawley. He was not born in 
King's County, nor had he a King's County ancestry, but so many 
years of his life were spent here, and so important was the influ- 
ence he wielded in King's, that a sketch of his life must not be ab- 
sent from our list of brief biographies. Edmund Albern Crawley 
was the son of a British naval officer, Captain Thomas Crawley, who 
as a midshipmen served under Admiral Nelson. The family be- 
longed to Suffolk, England, in which county Captain Crawley's 
father, a country gentleman, owned an estate. Captain Crawley's 
wife was Esther Bernal, of Jewish parentage in London, whose 
brother, Ralph Bernal, took the name of Bernal Osborne, and for 
many years sat in the House of Commons for Rochester. Edmund 
Albern Crawley was born at Ipswich, Suffolk, Jan. 20, 1799, but 
when he was about 5 years old his father came out to Cape Breton, 
and selected as his residence "Point Amelia," a beautiful spot on 
the harbour, opposite the town of Sydney. There, acting as Crown 
Surveyor of the Island, he spent the rest of his life. He died in 
July, 1851. 

Besides Edmund Albern there were three other sons, and the 
whole family were people of the highest breeding, and of great in- 
telligence and piety. Their associations, too, although in the re- 
mote Island of Cape Breton, were unusually refined, for in those 
days Sydney was an important naval station and every summer its 
harbour was visited by British and French men-of-war, the officers of 
which were always intimate at Captain Crawley's house. Edmund 
Crawley's preparation for college was obtained from his father, and 



486 KING'S COUNTY 

in 1816 he went to King 's. Having graduated from that college, and 
received his degree of M. A., in 1822, he was admitted to the Nova 
Scotia bar. He had of course been reared in the Church of England, 
and when he began his practice of law, having settled in Halifax, 
he became an active member of St. Paul's Church. The great 
secession from that church came in 1826, and among the most im- 
portant seceders was the brilliant young barrister, now 27 years old. 
June 1, 1828, he was immersed and formally became a Baptist, and 
before long he felt impelled to study for the ministry and to pre- 
pare himself went to Andover Theological Seminary. From Andover 
he went to Brown, and at Providence in the year 1830 was ordained. 
Keturning to Halifax he assumed the pastorate of the recently 
formed Granville Street Baptist Church, into which many of his fel- 
low seceders from St. Paul's had incorporated themselves. Until 
1839 he held this pastorate, then he resigned it to fill the chair of 
Moral and Intellectual Philosophy in the newly founded Queen's, 
now Acadia College. In 1847 he returned to Halifax, again as pas- 
tor of the Granville Street Church, but after five years' service there 
was once more called to Acadia, this time as president of the college. 
For four years he remained president, then he obtained leave of 
absence for a year and went to the United States. July 12, 1856, 
he resigned the headship of the college, and until 1864 lived in the 
United States. He then came back to Acadia as professor and in 
this position remained until August, 1822. From that date until his 
death, September 27, 1888, he enjoyed a retiring pension from the 
college. It was largely through the influence of Dr. Crawley and 
Judge Johnstone that the Baptist denomination gained its high 
standing in Nova Scotia, and in King's County, where Dr. Craw- 
ley so long lived and directly laboured, the influence of this cul- 
tivated man was perhaps most strongly felt. Althought he never 
held a pastorate in the county he frequently filled pulpits here, and 
it is to be hoped that the memory of his noble character, and of 
the dignified grace of his presence, will never fade from the minds 
of King's County men. 
Dr. Crawley was a tall, spare, commanding-looking man, with a 



BIOGRAPHIES 487 

face that indicated not only great strength, but the noblest senti- 
ment. His manner was distinguished by the truest courtesy, his 
voice was one of exquisite sweetness, and his utterance was char- 
acterized by precision and grace. Among his fellows he moved 
modestly, but he moved always like a noble or a king. In dignity 
few that we have ever seen could approach him. As he read the 
Scriptures there was in his voice and manner a distinct grandeur. 
His sermons, too, were always eloquent, and sometimes impassioned. 
The scholastic honors given him were, a Doctorate of Divinity, from 
Brown University, in 1845, and a Doctorate of Civil Law, from 
King's, in 1888. Dr. Crawley married (1) in 1833, Julia Amelia 
Wilby, of Boston, Mass., who died August 19, 1842; (2) December 
5, 1843, Elizabeth, dau. of Dr. Lewis Johnstone, of "Annandale," 
Wolfville, by whom he had six children. Of these C. Sidney Craw- 
ley, Esq., barrister of "Wolfville, is the eldest son, and Mrs. Andrew 
DeWolf Barss, the eldest daughter. Other children are, Mrs. Sey- 
mour Tobin, Mrs. Everett W. Sawyer, and Bernal Crawley. 



THE REV. STEPHEN WILLIAM de BLOIS, D. D. 

The Rev, Stephen William de Blois, D, D., son of William Minet 
and Jane Vermilye (Pryor) de Blois, and nephew of Rev. John 
Pryor, D. D., was born in Halifax, in 1827, and probably baptized in 
St. Paul's parish, but went to Acadia College, and after graduating 
there (in 1846) entered the Baptist ministry. In 1855, on the 
death of Rev. Theodore Seth Harding, he became pastor of the Hor- 
ton Baptist Church, the duties of which he faithfully discharged 
until his death (about 1880), He was given the degree D. D., by 
Acadia University, in 1881. 

His only son, the Rev. Austen Kennedy de Blois, Ph.D., LL.D., is 
pastor of the First Baptist Church, Chicago, He was bom in Wolf- 
ville, December 17, 1866, was matriculated at Horton Academy at 
the age of 14, and graduated at Acadia University in 1886. After 
some time of travel abroad he spent two years as a graduate stu- 
dent at Brown University, Providence, R. I., where he received the 



488 KING'S COUNTY 

degrees of M. A. and Ph.D. He then studied at the Episcopal Di- 
vinity School in Philadelphia, at Newton Theological Institute, 
Mass., and at Berlin and Leipzig, Germany, in the latter universities 
specializing in history and philosophy. In 1890 he returned to 
America, and in 1891 became Vice-Principal of the Union Baptist 
Seminary at St. Martin's, New Brunswick. From 1892 to '94 he 
was principal of this seminary, and from 1894 to '99 president of 
Shurtleff College, Alton, Illinois. In 1892 he was ordained, and from 
1899 to 1903 was pastor of the First Baptist Church of Elgin, 111. 
Since 1903 he has been pastor of the First Baptist Church of Chi- 
cago. June 25, 1890, he married Erminie Dagmar Day. 



PROFESSOR JAMES DeMILLE, M. A. 

Professor James DeMille, the novelist, whose interests so long 
centred in King's County, was born in New Brunswick, educated 
partly at Wolfville and partly at Brown University, Providence, 
R. I., and for five years held a professorship at Acadia, his interest 
in the King 's County university and his knowledge of life there ex- 
pressing itself in his books, *'B. 0. W. C," and ''Boys of Grand Pre 
School." He was, at his best, a prose writer of much ability, but 
he wrote for a popular market much that was not as good as, for 
example, his ''Helena's Household, a Tale of the First Century," 
"That he had fine poetic feeling," says Rev. Arthur J. Lockhart, 
and not a little of the gift of lyric expression, is indicated by his 
posthumously published poem "Behind the Veil." Professor 
DeMille was born August 23, 1837, graduated at Brown in 1854, 
was Professor of Classics in Acadia from 1860 to '65, and from 1865 
until his death was Professor of History and Rhetoric in Dalhousie 
University, Halifax. He is by all means, next to Judge Haliburton, 
the most prolific and best known writer of fiction the Maritine 
Provinces have produced. He married Anna Pryor, daughter of 
Rev. John Pryor, D. D., and his wife, Elizabeth Mary (Boggs), and 
died in Halifax, January 28, 1880, leaving children, one of whom 
is Professor Arthur B. DeMille, also a writer of much charm. 



BIOGRAPHIES 489 

GURDON DENISON, M. D., M. P. P. 

Gurdon Denison, M. D., M. P. P., 7th son of Col. Robert and Pru- 
dence (Sherman) Denison, was born in 1744, and married in 1778 
Catherine Fitzpatriek, of Halifax. He practiced medicine, probably 
in Horton, and is said to have been a very popular man. He repre- 
sented the town of Horton from 1785 to 1793. He died in 1807. He 
and his wife, Catherine, had ten children, seven of whom were 
daughters. One of these, Marie, born June 19, 1796, was married to 
Mark Henry Hector Wright, son of an English officer, and their 
daughter, Sophia Wright, was married to Samuel Gay Black, of 
Windsor, whose only son is William Anderson Black, Esq., merchant 
of Halifax. 



JUDGE JAMES A. DENSION 

James A. Denison, Esq., son of James Denison, one of the first 
lawyers in the county, and his wife, Lavinia (Denison) Denison, was 
bom in Horton, November 22, 1802, studied law with Judge Thomas 
Chandler Haliburton, was admitted to the Nova Scotia bar in 1827, 
and settled in Digby, of which county he was for many years Judge 
of Probate. He married June 26, 1832, Louisa, daughter of the 
Rev. Roger M. Viets, formerly of Simsbury, Conn., the first rector 
of Digby. Judge Dension had eleven children. 



COLONEL ROBERT DENISON, M. P. P. 

Colonel Robert Denison, M. P. P., was born in Mohegan, now 
Montville, New London, Conn., in 1697, was a captain in General 
Roger Wolcott's brigade at the capture of Louisburg in 1745, and 
won reputation for gallant behavior there. He was soon promoted 
to a colonelcy, but after the troops were disbanded he settled in Hor- 
ton, where May 29, 1761, he received a share and a half of land. 
One of the first representatives from the County of King 's he served 
in the legislature from 1761 to 1765. Colonel Denison married (1) 
October 19, 1721, Deborah, daughter of Matthew and Phebe Gris- 



490 KING'S COUNTY 

wold, of Lyme, Conn,; (2) April 4, 1733, Prudence, daughter of 
David and Mercy Sherman of New Haven. In 1760 or '61 he re- 
moved from Montville to Horton, where he died in 1766. By his 
first marriage he had eight children, by his second, seven. In the 
meeting house of the Second Congregationalist Church of New Lon- 
don, which was built in 1723, the four pews of greatest honor were 
the two on each side of the pulpit, and the two on each side of the 
door opposite the pulpit. These four were occupied by Mrs. Ray- 
mond and her son Joshua, Captain Robert Denison, Captain John 
Mason and Madam Livingston, and Mrs. Joseph Otis and Major 
John Merritt. A special vote of the society gave Captain Denison 
liberty to build a pew for himself and his heirs forever, in con- 
sideration of his having given forty-two pounds to the meeting 
house, "ten acres of land to the ministry, and fifty to the minister." 
His pew was to reach from post to post, and to be of the same width 
as the pulpit and deacons' seat. 



COL. SHERMAN DENISON, M. P. P. 

Sherman Denison, son of David Sherman and Sarah (Fox) Deni- 
son, was born in Horton, June 17, 1769. He was a man of mark in 
Nova Scotia, was a colonel in the militia, and is reported to have 
been the finest looking man in Nova Scotia. He represented the 
town of Horton in the legislature from 1820 until 1827. He mar- 
ried, March 12, 1792, Nancy, daughter of Jonathan and Rebecca 
(Allison) Crane, and had eight children: Sherman David, William 
Crane, Joseph Allison, Nancy, Lavinia; Rebecca, married to Ed- 
ward Bayers ; Sophia, married to Robert DeWolf ; Mary. 



BENJAMIN DeWOLF, M. P. P. 

Benjamin DeWolf, son of Simeon and Parnell (Kirtland) De- 
Wolf, bom October 14, 1744, at Lyme, Conn,, was the founder of the 
chief DeWolf family of Windsor, N. S. He married, March 16, 1769, 
Rachel, daughter of Dr. Ephraim Otis, of Scituate, Mass., and was 



BIOGRAPHIES 491 

for many years one of the most successful business men in Hants 
county. November 5, 1784, he took out a grant of 1,200 acres of 
land, bordering on the Basin of Minas; July 22, 1813, he also took 
out a second grant of 2,800 acres, on the Musquodoboit Road; and 
May 5, 1814, he took out a third grant of 2,850 acres on the 
Musquodoboit Road. With a single exception he was the largest 
taxpayer in Windsor. He represented Hants county from 1785 to 
1798, was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 1788, and for many 
years was High Sheriff of Hants. He granted freedom to his slaves, 
but they preferred to remain in his service. He died September 1 
or 2, 1819 ; his wife died August 13, 1818. See the DeWolf Family 
Sketches. 

THE REV. CHAELES DeWOLFE, D. D. 

The Rev. Charles DeWolfe, D. D., son of Stephen Brown and Har- 
riet (Ruggles) DeWolfe, was born in Wolfville, May 30, 1815, and 
died there, June 9, 1875. He began the study of law at Halifax, 
but in 1836 relinquished that profession to enter on a theological 
course at Hoxton, England. In September, 1838, he was ordained 
to the ministry, in the Wesleyan Chapel, City Road, London, and 
returned to Nova Scotia. After many years of arduous and success- 
ful duty as an itinerant minister in Nova Scotia he was elected 
President of the Conference. In 1862 he was appointed Professor 
of Theology at Mt. Allison College, Sackville, N. B., but in 1870 he 
retired from this post, and thenceforth until he died, resided at Wolf- 
viUe, where he was born. He married Matilda, daughter of Martin 
Gay Black, of Halifax, and had two daughters, Fanny, wife of the 
Hon. Nathaniel L. White, K. C, of Shelburne; and Louisa. (The 
members of the DeWolf family to which Dr. Charles DeWolfe be- 
longed have commonly spelled their name with the final "e, " 
the other families commonly have not). 



DANIEL DeWOLF, M. P. P. 

One of the most important persons in Horton in his day was 



492 KING'S COUNTY 

Daniel DeWolf M. P. P., of Wolfville, born in Killingworth, Conn., 
May 28, 1761, married in Horton, March 26, 1794, Lydia Kirtland, 
daughter of Lebbeus and Lucilla (DeWolf) Harris, and died Jan- 
uary 31, 1837. His wife died November 17, 1843. As he was a son 
of one of the DeWolf grantees, Jehiel, and his wife was the grand- 
daughter of another, Nathan, his descendants are doubly descended 
from the Connecticut DeWolfs. A list of his children will be found 
in the Genealogies in this book. In 1791 Daniel DeWolf was taxed 
at the highest rate. In 1806 he was elected M. P. P. for Horton, 
and in this capacity he served for six years. He was also for 
many years a Justice of the Peace and Coroner. On the 31st of 
May, 1810, he and his older brother, Oliver, took out a grant of 
1,950 acres of Crown land at Eiver Philip. His residence for the 
greater part of his married life was a house which stands near St. 
John's Parish Church, Wolfville. For the family of Daniel DeWolf 
see DeWolf Family Sketches. (Daniel DeWolf was the author's 
great-great uncle). 



JUDGE ELISHA DeWOLF, M. P. P. 

Judge Elisha DeWolf, M. P. P., son of Nathan DeWolf, the grantee, 
formerly of Saybrook, and his wife, Lydia (Kirtland), was born in 
Saybrook, May 5, 1756. He married in Horton, September 1, 1779, 
Margaret, eldest daughter of Captain Thomas and Desire (Gore) 
Ratchford, born September 3, 1762, and had thirteen children, who 
became connected by marriage, respectively, with the families of 
Fitch, Barss, Hosterman, Freeman, Woodward, Ratchford, Calkin, 
Starr, and Clarke. Elisha DeWolf was High Sheriff of King's from 
1784 to 1789, and represented the county from 1793 to 1799 and 
from 1818 to 1820. For many years he was Assistant Judge of the 
Court of Common Pleas. He was also Postmaster, Collector of Cus- 
toms and a Justice of the Peace. One of the richest men in Horton, 
in 1799 he built a house in Wolfville (lately occupied by W. 0. 
Haliburton, Esq.), which for those days was handsome, and there 
for sixty years he and his wife entertained most hospitably. Their 



BIOGRAPHIES 493 

hospitality, indeed, remains one of the best traditions of Horton. On 
the occasion of the trip, through the western counties of H. R. H., 
the Duke of Kent, the Prince was entertained at Judge De Wolf's. 
It is remembered that Judge DeWolf owned one slave, Phyllis. The 
Judge died November 30, 1837 ; Mrs. DeWolf died March 25, 1852. 
The most important of their sons in King's County was Hon. 
Thomas Andrew Strange DeWolf. 



JAMES RATCHFORD DeWOLF, M. P. P. (For Liverpool) 

James Ratchford DeWolf, J. P. and M. P. P., son of Judge Elisha 
and Margaret (Ratchford) DeWolf, was born in Horton, Septem- 
ber 14, 1787, removed to Liverpool, N. S., about 1810, and married, 
April 29, of that year, Elizabeth, only daughter of Col. Joseph Free- 
man. Entering into partnership with Col. Freeman and two other 
gentlemen, under the firm name of Freeman, DeWolf & Co., h« be- 
came a prosperous merchant. The firm had also a branch house at 
Port Medway. Mr. DeWolf remained connected with Col. Freeman 
until 1825, when he began business under his own name. In 1840 
he closed his business and henceforth gave all his time to public 
duties. He was a magistrate, and for many years represented the 
town of Liverpool in the Assembly. His children were five: Mar- 
garet, married to Edward Spurr ; Ann Freeman, married (l)to George 
Van Buskirk, (2) to Rev, W. H. Snyder, of Mahone Bay; Hannah 
Mclntyre, born April 28, 1815, married as his second wife, October 
20, 1846, to Stephen Harrington Moore, Esq, Q. C, of Kentville; 
Joseph Freeman ; Amelia Catharine, married to Frank Collins. Mr. 
DeWolf died at Liverpool, June 10, 1855, his widow died July 12, 
1862. 



JAMES RATCHFORD DeWOLF, M. D. 

James Ratchford DeWolf, M. D., L. R. C. S. E., and L. M. of the 
Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, was a son of Hon. Thomas 
Andrew Strange and Nancy (Ratchford) DeWolf, of Horton, and 



494 KING'S COUNTY 

was born in Horton, November 19, 1818, He married November 17, 
1846, Eleanor Reade Sandifer, daughter of William and Mary (Pote) 
Sandifer, of Cambridge, England, born March 11, 1821, and died 
in Halifax. He received his preparatory education at Horton Acad- 
emy, studied medicine in Windsor with Dr. E. F. Harding, and 
then went to Edinburgh University, where he graduated, M. D., in 
1841, taking also the degrees of L. R. C. S. E., and L. M. of the 
Royal College of Surgeons. Returning to Nova Scotia he practised 
for two years at Kentville, then removing to Newfoundland. In 
1844 he returned to Halifax and there practised until 1857, when 
he was appointed first Medical Superintendent of the Nova Scotia 
Hospital for the Insane, a position he ably filled for twenty years. 
He was successively President of the Nova Scotia Philanthropic So- 
ciety and the Nova Scotia Medical Society, and from 1871 to 1875 
Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in Dalhousie University. He 
had in all four children the third of whom was married to Charles 
Sidney Harrington, of Halifax, barrister. 

Before his death Dr. DeWolf compiled a genealogy of the Nova 
Scotia DeWolf families, which he had typ,e-written, but the original 
manuscript of which he deposited with the N. E. Historic Genealogi- 
cal Society. In the preparation of the sketch of the family of Jehiel 
DeWolf he was assisted by the author of this work, and both Dr. 
DeWolf and the author contributed largely to the DeWolf notes 
and charts printed by Professor and Mrs. Salisbury of New 
Haven, a few years ago. No son of the county has been more in- 
terested in the county's early history than was Dr. DeWolf. 



HON. THOMAS ANDREW STRANGE DeWOLP, M. E. C. 

Hon. Thomas Andrew Strange DeWolf, M. P. P., M. E. C, fourth 
son of Judge Elisha and Margaret (Ratchford) DeWolf, born April 
19, 1795, married December 30, 1817, or March 26, 1818, his first 
cousin, Nancy, daughter of Col. James and Mary (Crane) Ratch- 
ford, bom June 1, 1798. Mr. DeWolf represented the County of 
Kings from 1837 until 1848. He was made a member of H. M. 



BIOGRAPHIES 495 

(first) Executive Council, February 10, 1838, and was subsequently 
Collector of Customs. When a qualification bill authorizing the 
election of non-resident members was introduced in the legislature 
as a government measure, he resigned from the Executive Council. 
He died at "Wolfville, September 21, 1878 ; his widow died at Dart- 
mouth, March 10, 1883. Hon. T. A. S. DeWolf had fourteen chil- 
dren, the most important of whom was James Ratchford DeWolf, 
M. D., L. R. C. S. E. and L. M., of the Royal College of Surgeons, 
Edinburgh. 



HON. CHARLES DICKIE, M. L. C. 

Hon, Charles Dickie, M. L. C, son of David (Matthew) and 
Jerusha (dark) Dickie, was a successful merchant and farmer at 
Canning, where he began business in 1833. He was actively inter- 
ested in politics, and in 1861 was appointed to the Legislative Coun- 
cil. Being opposed co Confederation, however, he retired from that 
body in 1866. In 1871 he was reappointed, and for the rest of his 
life sat in the Council. In politics Mr. Dickie was a staunch Liberal. 



DAVID M. DICKIE, M. P. P. 

David M. Dickie, M. P. P., born after 1826, merchant and ship 
owner of Canning, Cornwallis, was a son of Hon. Charles, M. L. C, 
and Sarah (Tupper) Dickie. Like his father, he was long conspicu- 
ously active in Liberal politics. In later life he held the office of 
Registrar of Deeds. 



HUGH LOGAN DICKIE, ESQ. 

Hugh Logan Dickie, an honoured merchant and public man of 
King's County was the son of James and Martha (Martin) Dickie, 
and was born May 25, 1799. He married (1) March 21, 1821, Janet 
Cummings, (2) August 22, 1837, Matilda Avery, (3) May 24, 1849, 
Nancy, daughter of James Downing Blair. By his last marriage he 



496 KING'S COUNTY 

had sons, Clement B., and Kobert C, He was Custos Rotulorum of 
King's County from 1858 to 1873. He died December 27, 1872. His 
tombstone in the Chipman's Corner burying-ground records that 
**for fifty years he was a zealous member of the Presbyterian 
Church." See the Dickie Family Sketch. 



JAMES EDWARD DICKIE, ESQ. 

James Edward, second son of Isaac Patton and Rebecca (Barnhill) 
Dickie, was born January 18, 1832. When a young man he removed 
from Cornwallis to Upper Stewiacke, N. S., where he became a pros- 
perous business man, and an elder in the Presbyterian Church. The 
latter ofSce he adorned by an exemplary and useful life. He died 
in 1891. Through his family his influence has spread widely. He 
married March 24, 1859 (in his 27th year), Harriet, daughter of 
Eliakim Tupper, of Upper Stewiacke, and had eight children, six 
of whom are now living. 

His son, Alfred Dickie, a noted lumber merchant, married Alice, 
daughter of Edwin E. Dickie, of Upper Canard, Cornwallis, and had 
children: Rufus, Walter, Aileen, Ethel, Harold. His daughter, 
Alice Dickie, was married (1) December 26, 1889, to Daniel Stewart, 
of Summerside, P. E. I. ; (2) September 6, 1896, to Rev. R. F. Carter, 
to whom she has borne two children, Stewart and MoUie. 

His son. Rev. Henry Dickie, M. A., D. D., pastor successively of 
the Presbyterian Church at Summerside, P. E. I., at Windsor, N. S,, 
of Chambers Church, Woodstock, Ont., and of the First Church, Chat- 
ham, Ont., married, June 2, 1897, at Bridgetown, N. S., Helen Q., 
daughter of Rev. D. S. Gordon, of Bridgetown, and has three children, 
Gordon, Wilfrid, and Margaret. His son, Edwin, at first continued 
his father's business in Upper Stewiacke, but in 1907, removed to 
Vancouver, B. C. The last married, June 6, 1900, Frances, daughter 
of Col. Oxley, of Oxford, N. S., and has three daughters. His 
daughter, Bessie, was married, November 14, 1894, to Hedley Vicars 
Kent, M. D., of Truro, and has four daughters, Jean, Helen, Muriel, 
and Margaret. His daughter Laura was married, July 2, 1903, to 



BIOGRAPHIES 497 

D. G. Mackay, M. D., and has three children, Mary, Ronald, and 
Malcolm, 

HON. JOHN BAENHILL DICKIE, M. L. 0. 

Hon. John Barnhill Dickie, M. L. C, eldest son of Isaac Patton 
and Rebecca (Barnhill) Dickie, was born March 30, 1829, and edu- 
cated at the Rev. William Sommerville 's School, in Horton, at 
Wolfville and Sackville academies, and at the Free Church College, 
Halifax. For some years he taught in the public schools of Nova 
Scotia, afterwards he occupied the chair of mathematics in the Hali- 
fax Academy. He next settled in Onslow, and for some years 
farmed. In 1870 he removed to Truro and engaged in trading, 
banking, and ship building. Later he was Custos Rotulorum for 
Colchester county. In 1874 he entered public life, in that year 
being elected to represent Colchester county in the assembly. Dur- 
ing the session of 1875 he was Speaker of the House. In 1878 he 
was appointed to H. M. Legislative Council. In the Presbyterian 
Church he was an active and useful man. He was created an elder 
in 1858, and until his death continued to discharge faithfully the 
duties of this office. He was frequently a delegate to the Presbytery 
and the Synod. In this capacity he was present and took part in 
1860 at Pictou, when the union of the Free and United Presbyterian 
bodies was effected. He married (1), in 1850, at Stewiacke, Ellen, 
eldest daughter of Timothy Putnam, who bore him three children: 
Samuel, who married and lives in Onslow; Mary, married to Jehiel 
Fulton, and lives near Strathcona, Alberta ; Martin, manager of the 
Royal Bank (formerly the Merchants' Bank of Halifax), in Truro, 
married Lucy H. Eaton, of Maitland, and has sons : Frank, Clarence, 
Barry. Hon. John Barnhill Dickie married (2) in 1858, at Onslow, 
Harriet, eldest daughter of Hugh Dickson, who bore him children: 
Ellen, married to C. M. Dawson, of Truro ; Clara, married to Frank 
Dickie, of Indianapolis ; Joan, married to Adolphe S. White, C. E., in 
Russia; Cecilia, married to Rev. J. S. Sutherland, B. D., of Hali- 
fax; Henry A., a lawyer in Truro, married a daughter of Archibald 
Campbell, of Tatmagouche. 



498 KING'S COUNTY 

GEORGE DODGE, ESQ. 

George Dodge, long one of Kentville's most respected merchants, 
was the second son of David and Phebe (Scott) Dodge. He was 
born, April 11, 1814, and died December 2, 1894. Like the rest of 
his immediate relatives he was buried in Oak Grove Cemetery. He 
married rather late in life, Charlotte, daughter of John and Rebecca 
(Chipman) Ross, of Annapolis county, a grand-daughter of Rev. 
William and Mary McGowan (Dickey) Chipman, but had no chil- 
dren. On the occasion of his funeral the Kentville Advertiser said: 

"The late George Dodge, Esq., whose death occurred on Sunday 
last, was buried at The Oaks on Tuesday. We publish elsewhere 
portions of the address given by Rev. Dr. Brock at the funeral serv- 
ice. As a merchant Mr. Dodge ever maintained a character of the 
strictest integrity and the considerable fortune acquired by him is a 
sufficient witness to his industry and business sagacity. ' ' 



HON. THOMAS LEWIS DODGE, M. L. C. 

Hon. Thomas Lewis Dodge, thirdsonof David and Phebe (Scott) 
Dodge, was born in Horton, July 19, 1816. He married (1) Sarah, 
daughter of Gideon S. and Wilhelmina (Moore) Harrington, and by 
her had two children, Sarah Wilhelmina, and Brenton Halliburton 
Dodge, M. P. P. He married (2) Harriet Amy, youngest daughter 
of John and Anne (Richardson) Hamilton, of Halifax County, born 
August 3, 1828, a sister of David Stuart Hamilton, D. C. L. By this 
marriage Mr. Dodge had four sons: Cutler Lewis, Ernest Stuart, 
George Allison (colonel in the Canadian Army), Harry Hamilton. 
Hon. Mr. Dodge's eldest son, Brenton Halliburton, M. P. P., has 
represented the county in the assembly since 1894. Hon. Thomas 
Lewis Dodge died October 31, 1893, and the following notice of him 
appeared in a King's County newspaper, November 8, 1893 : 

"Hon. Thomas Lewis Dodge, M. L. C, died at his residence in 
Kentville, at an early hour on Thursday morning. He had been in 
failing health for some time, and his death was not unexpected by 
those around him. The news of his demise will be heard with regret 
in all parts of this county, and of the province as well, for Mr. 



BIOGRAPHIES 499 

Dodge was widely and favorably known. He did business for many 
years on Main street, Kentville. A large building which he erected 
on that street, near where the Porter House now stands, was de- 
stroyed by fire in 1876. Mr. Dodge then erected a large store on 
Webster street, and taking his sons into partnership with him the 
firm of T. L. Dodge & Co. was formed. 

"In 1870, on the retirement of Mr. Daniel Moore from the office 
of County Treasurer, Mr, Dodge was elected to that position, which 
he continued to fill until the time of his death, being regularly re- 
elected since county incorporation was effected, by an unanimous 
vote of the Council. In 1882 Mr. Dodge contested the county in 
the Liberal interest for the local legislature and was returned at 
the head of the poll. In 1886 he did not seek re-election, and the 
following year he was appointed to a seat in the Legislative Council. 
This he held to the time of his death. 

"In private life, Mr, Dodge was a genial, kindly gentleman. He 
had ever a kindly word and hearty greeting for young or old, rich or 
poor, and he will be sincerely mourned by hosts of personal friends. 
The family have the sympathy of all in their bereavement, but have 
the satisfaction of knowing that in every department of life, as a 
business man, as a politician, as a private citizen, the deceased 
leaves behind him an untarnished record. ' ' 



COLONEL DANIEL LEWIS EATON, M. A. 

Colonel Daniel Lewis Eaton, M. A,, a son of Daniel and Margaret 
(Bulmer) Eaton whose parents spent the latter part of their lives 
in Perry, Maine, was born October 31, 1824, graduated at Bowdoin 
College, in 1851, read law with Messrs, Shepley and Dana, in Port- 
land, Me., and during the American Civil "War was paymaster of 
the army at "Washington, D. C. He was later appointed Secretary 
of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company of "Washington, and 
still later, cashier of the Second National Bank. He died in "Wash- 
ington, February 16, 1873, universally respected. His wife was 
Frances, daughter of Eben and Mary Jones (Jordan) "Webster, of 



500 KING'S COUNTY 

Cape Elizabeth, Me. His brothers were George, a well-known ship 
broker in St. John, N. B., and Eev. William Wentworth, who lived 
for many years and died in Chicago, Illinois. His sisters were : 
Martha, married to Theodore Cutts, of Eastport, Me.; Mary Ann, 
married to Matthias Viekery, of Calais, Me.; Irene Deborah, mar- 
ried to Nathaniel Brown, of Calais, Me. ; Clarissa Margaret, married 
to Jonathan Stickney; Sarah, married to the Rev. Thomas Dwight 
Howard, a Unitarian clergyman. 



FRANCIS HERBERT EATON, M. A., D. C. L. 

Francis Herbert Eaton, M. A., D. C. L., second son of William and 
Anna Augusta Willoughby (Hamilton) Eaton, was born in Kent- 
ville, July 29, 1851, and prepared for college at the Kentville 
grammar school and at Horton Academy. In 1869 he entered 
Acadia College, and in 1873 graduated B. A. He then went to Har- 
vard for two years, and from that university in 1875 received a 
second B. A. In 1877 he returned to Harvard for a post-graduate 
course but the next year was appointed to the prineipalship of Am- 
herst Academy. In 1879 he became Professor of Mathematics and 
Physics in the Normal School at Truro, and that position he held for 
eleven years. In 1891-2 he held temporary appointments as 
mathematical instructor in the Boston Latin School and the Massa- 
chusetts Institute of Technology, six months in each. In August, 
1897, he assumed the control of public education in the city of Vic- 
toria, and this position he ably filled till his death, January 11, 
1908. Dr. Frank Eaton was an educationist of the highest order, 
he had clear vision, strong grasp of mind, and remarkable power in 
the organization and control of educational forces. In his tenure of 
office as head of the Victoria schools he did a work not only for 
Victoria but for the Province of British Columbia at large, the ef- 
fect of which will never be lost. He died only in the prime of life, 
but in the Martime Provinces, and on the Canadian Pacific Coast he 
had earned for himself an enduring place among Canada's leading 
men. In personal character he had true nobility, and the affection 



BIOGRAPHIES 501 

he everywhere inspired reached almost to the point of adoration. 
His funeral was held in Christ Church Cathedral, Victoria, on Sun- 
day, January 12, 1908, and he was then laid to rest in the Vic- 
toria cemetery, which slopes gently down to the blue waters of 
Juan de Fuca straits. In recognition of his unusual services to 
education in Canada, in 1905 his first alma mater, Acadia, which in 
1876 had given him his Master's Degree, conferred on him the high- 
est gift in its power, the degree of Doctor of Civil Law. 



WARD EATON, ESQ. 

Ward Eaton was born in Cornwallis November 28, 1797, 
married May 13, 1819, his first cousin, Eimice Deborah Eaton, 
daughter of Elisha and Irene (Bliss), and died February 1, 1870. 
His wife died May 13, 1874. In private life Mr. Eaton was dignified 
and courteous, and he died before his strong intellect had per- 
ceptibly weakened. His wife was a woman of true nobility, and 
the hospitality of their home in Cornwallis, like that of Judge 
Elisha DeWolf and his wife in Horton, is among the county's best 
private traditions. Ward Eaton was for many years a Justice of 
the Peace in Cornwallis, and for a long period Clerk of the town. 
He was an excellent business man and was frequently called on to 
arbitrate in matters of legal dispute. When acting as justice he 
invariably secured a settlement of cases before they came to trial, 
and he was thus often of great service to his neighbors and the com- 
munity. "In politics he was a strong Conservative and while he 
was reserved in speech he would spend any amount of labour in the 
advancement of party ends." He was a warm friend and advocate 
of such Conservative leaders as Judge Johnstone, and the Judge 
and other well-known politicians were frequently at his house. His 
children were : Ann Isabella, born August 30, 1826, married October 
25, 1852, to Ebenezer Rand, Collector of Customs; Leander, born 
December 25, 1821, married May 22, 1850, Paulina, daughter of 
Samuel and Susanna (Cox) Starr; William, born September 30, 
1823, married February 15, 1849, Anna Augusta Willoughby, 



502 KING'S COUNTY 

daughter of Otho and Maria (Starr) Hamilton; John Rufus, born 
July 3, 1826, married December 1, 1849, Josephine Collins, daugh- 
ter of Otho, and Maria (Starr) Hamilton; Martha, born March 9, 
1828, married January 25, 1860, to Major John Edward Starr; 
James Stanley, born February 4, 1836, married May 28, 1860, Janet, 
daughter of Peter and Janet (Patterson) Nicholson, formerly of 
Dumfries, Scotland, 

WILLIAM EATON, ESQ. 

William Eaton, second son of Ward Eaton, Esq., was born in Com- 
wallis, September 30, 1823, studied at Horton Academy, and became 
an accomplished teacher, especially of classics and mathematics. He 
taught, in all, for twelve years, the last seven years in Kentville, 
where he married and settled. In 1854 he was appointed a Commis- 
sioner of Schools, which office he held, except for three years, for 
the rest of his life. In 1859 he was made a Commissioner in the Su- 
preme Court of the Province, and in 1870, as his father had been 
before him, a Justice of the Peace. In 1865 the government, acting 
through the Council of Public Instruction, conferred on him the 
office of Inspector of Schools for King's County, in place of John 
Burgess Calkin, LL.D. In this office he remained imtil a change 
occurred in the government in 1868. "At the time of his appoint- 
ment the Free School Act had recently come into operation and his 
pacific temper and his courteous treatment of the people of the 
county did much toward allaying the discontent it had aroused." 
In 1886 the town of Kentville was incorporated and he was given 
a place on its first Council Board. Soon after, he accepted the 
double office of Clerk and Treasurer of the town and this 
office he held till he died. His death occurred from pneumonia, 
May 3, 1893. His wife was Anna Augusta Willoughby Hamilton, 
and his sons. Rev. Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton, D. C. L., 
Francis Herbert Eaton, D. C. L., Rufus WiUiam, Harry Havelock 
and Leslie Seymour Eaton. His daughters were Anna Morton, wife 
of George A. Layton, of Truro, and Emily Maria Hamilton, who died 
young. Mrs. William Eaton died September 23, 1883. 



BIOGRAPHIES 503 

JAMES RATCHFORD FITCH, M. D. 

James Ratchford Fitch, M. D., the eldest son of Simon and Sophia 
Henrietta (DeWolf ) Fitch, was born in Wolfville, January 14, 1811, 
and studied medicine in Philadelphia. For a while he practised in 
Horton, but later he removed to Wilmot, and still later to Carleton, 
N. B. He died in Wolfville, December 24, 1891. He married in 
June, 1836, Sarah B. Grant, of Newport, Hants county, and had 
children: Sophia Grant, born January 10, 1838, died November 4, 
1856 ; James Nutting, M. D., of whom hereafter ; Amelia Maria, born 
March 29, 1843 ; Elizabeth Pryor, born June 16, 1845, died Decem- 
ber 19, 1885. His son. Dr. James Nutting Fitch, for many years 
until the present, a resident of Lakeville, Cornwallis, was born 
February 1, 1841, and married, June 14, 1869, Adelia Burgess. He 
has had four children, only one of whom, however, was living in 
1890. 



SIMON FITCH, M. D. 

Simon Fitch, M. D., second son of Simon and Sophia Henrietta 
(DeWolf) Fitch, was born in Horton, January 2, 1820, and received 
his professional education in London, Paris, and Edinburgh. At 
Edinburgh University he was graduated in August, 1841, after 
which for a time he was House Surgeon to the Maternity Hospital. 
Returning to America, for several years he practised successfully at 
St. John, New Brunswick. In 1852 he removed to Wolfville, and 
in 1855 to Portland, Maine, where for twenty years he had a wide 
practice. He then spent two years in New York City, at the end of 
which time, in 1877, he again returned to Nova Scotia and settled 
in Halifax. In Halifax he not only practised privately but was 
active on the staff of the Victoria General Hospital. He had a wide 
reputation for skill, both as a surgeon and as a general practitioner. 
Dr. Fitch married (1) May 16, 1843, Margaret Ross Paddock, 
daughter of Thomas Paddock, M. D., born September 11, 1825, died 
April 17, 1875, and had children: M. Amelia (for whom see the 
chapter on King's County Authors); Thomas Simon Paddock, M. 



504 KING'S COUNTY 

D. ; Mary Sophia ; Frank Andrews ; John Alexander ; Adelaide Pad- 
dock; Laleah; Margaret Ross; Rev. Frank St. John; Arthur Pad- 
dock; Edith Gordon. Dr. Fitch married (2) Elizabeth Ackerman. 
The details of his professional career will be found in "Appleton's 
Encyclopedia of American Biography," and Atkinson's "Physicians 
and Surgeons of America. ' ' 

The eldest son of Dr. Simon Fitch, Dr. Thomas Simon Paddock Fitch, 
a prominent physician in Orange, N. J., was born in St. John, N. B., 
May 15, 1846, and died in Orange, in 1909. He was a member of 
the Orange Mountain Medical Society, and was for several years 
on the staff of the Orange Memorial Hospital. He was also, from 
1892 to 1895, a member of the Orange Board of Education. The 
Rev. Frank St. John Fitch is a clergyman in Orange, N. J. 



ABRAHAM GESNER, M. D., F. R. G. S. 

Dr. Abraham Gesner, son of Ool. Henry Gesner, who left New 
York with the King's Orange Rangers in 1778, was born in Cornwal- 
lis May 2, 1797, and studied medicine at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 
and Surgery at Guy's Hospital, London, at the latter hospital be- 
ing a pupil of Sir Ashley Cooper, John Abernethy, and other em- 
inent men. His leisure hours in England he devoted to the study 
of Chemistry and Geology. In 1835 he began an authorized sur- 
vey of the province of New Brunswick, which lasted till 1842. 
He practised medicine in Cornwallis and in Parrsborough, and 
wrote much on geology and kindred subjects. He married, Jan, 31, 
1822, Harriet, dau. of Isaac Webster, M. D., and had at least two 
sons: Henry; and Herbert, an Anglican clergyman. He died in 
Halifax, April 19 or 29, 1864. A much longer sketch of Dr. Ges- 
ner, with a list of his writings, will be found in Appleton's En- 
cyclopaedia. 

EDWARD HENRY HARRINGTON, ESQ. 

Edward Henry Harrington, son of Daniel and Ann Eliza (De 
Wolf) Harrington, was born at Halifax, June 15, 1802. He studied 



BIOGRAPHIES 505 

law and was admitted attorney Oct. 23, 1827, barrister, Oct. 28, 
1828. He was commissioned High Sheriff of Sydney county, Dec. 
18, 1835, and this office he filled till Dec, 1847. Later he returned 
to Halifax, where he practised law till his death, Jan. 24, 1883. 
June 16, 1830, he married at Lunenburg, N. S., Louisa Elizabeth, 
eldest dau. of John Pinnell, deceased, and his wife Frances, dau. 
of John Christopher and Elizabeth (Koch) Rudolf, and sister of 
Hon. Wm. Rudolf, M. L. C. Mrs. Edward Harrington died at Hal- 
ifax, Oct. 20, 1874. The children of Edward Henry and Louisa 
(Pinnell) Harrington were: Frances Ann, born at Halifax, Mar. 
24, 1832, married to John D Arcy Irvine, Lieut. R. N. ; Edward Ru- 
dolf, born July 18, 1834, married in London, Eng., Harriet Agnes, 
daughter of W. A. Salmon, M. D., of Wedmore, Somerset; Janet 
Louisa, born at Antigonish, Aug. 31, 1836, married at Halifax, Aug. 

14, 1866, to Henry Piers, merchant, son of Temple Foster and 
Elizabeth Thomas Piers, and was the mother of Harry Piers of 
Halifax; James Brenton Halliburton, barrister, born Nov. 8, 1838; 
Leonora Wadsworth, born Mar. 20, 1841, married at Halifax, July 

15, 1876, to Richard Wentworth Tremaine; Wentworth Alexander, 
born July 8, 1843 ; Emma Gertrude, born March 17, 1846 ; Arthur 
Inglis, born June 28, 1847, married at St. John, N. B., Aug. 2, 1871, 
Nellie C, daughter of Charles Adams; Charles Sidney, barrister, 
Q. C, born Mar. 8, 1850, married June 10, 1875, Mary Sophia 
Ratchford DeWolf, daughter of James Ratchford DeWolf, M. D., of 
whom a sketch will be found in this book ; a daughter born and died 
Mar. 8, 1852. 



JOHN THOMAS HILL, ESQ. 

John Thomas Hill, High Sheriff of King's County from 1793 
until his death in 1800, may have been the John Hill, who with 
his wife Jane and children, Thomas, Elizabeth, and Mary, came 
from Hull, Yorkshire, to Fort Cumberland in 1774 (N. E. Hist, and 
Gen. Register, Vol. 63), but of this we are not certain. He is said 
to have been the father of William Hill, afterwards Judge of the 



506 KING'S COUNTY 

Supreme Court. He may have been closely related, also, to "W. 
and J. T. Hill," who were in business in Halifax as late as 1822, 
having one of the few brick stores there then, and to a Mary Hill, 
who was married in St. Matthew's parish, Halifax, July 31, 1786, 
to Michael Perking. His son, William, afterward Judge of the 
Supreme Court, according to Murdoch, was in 1809 acting 
clerk of the Assembly in the absence of Hon. Michael Franck- 
lin. In 1811 Mr. Francklin, who was in ill health,, petitioned 
for and received the assistance of Mr. Hill again. In 1823 Wil- 
liam Hill was "Deputy Secretary of the House." At what date he 
was elevated to the Supreme Bench we do not know. That he was 
really the Sheriff's son is further indicated by the fact that Charles 
William Henry Harris, a well-known King's County lawyer, son 
of Abel Harris and his wife Christina Jane (Hill), daughter of the 
Sheriff, studied law in his office in Halifax. Sheriff Hill's only 
daughter whom we know of was, as we have said, Christina Jane, 
married in 1804 to Abel Harris. 

^eriff Hill was most zealous in the performance of his duties as 
sheriff. "No vessel," it is said, "that sneaked into any of the 
coves and discharged goods without his knowledge, deserved suc- 
cess. On one occasion he secured the person of a boy whom he 
wished use as a witness in the endeavor to convict the owner of 
a vessel of smuggling. This owner was very popular and his 
neighbors armed themselves, and surrounding Sheriff Hill's house, 
demanded the release of the witness. He was not given up, how- 
ever, the Sheriff despatching a messenger to Windsor for troops 
and retaining his prisoner as best he could till they should come. 
It was only with the troops' assistance that he was able to place 
his prisoner in the Horton jail." A good story is told of an en- 
counter between Col. Jonathan Crane and Sheriff Hill. Col. Crane 
had imported a cask of Jamaica rum, which Sheriff Hill learned 
wa,? at Horton Landing ready to be taken home. Whether Col. 
Crane had any intention, or not, of bringing the rum in without 
paying duty, we do not know, but at any rate he determined 
to have a joke on the Sheriff. Going with his ox-cart to Horton 



BIOGRAPHIES 607 

Landing, where the schooner lay which had brought the mm, ''with 
great show of stealth" he loaded the cask on his cart. He had 
gone only a short way with his smuggled rum when Sheriff Hill 
m,et him. With apparently very bad grace the Col. submitted 
to have his cart, oxen, and the cask of rum, confiscated. On tap- 
ping the cask next morning, the Sheriff found in it, not rum but 
water, without a trace of spirits. In the meantime, however, so 
the story runs, an actual cask of rum had been safely taken from 
the vessel and carried to Col. Crane's house. 

Sheriff Hill's devotion to duty finally cost him his life. As he 
was trying to arrest a man in Cornwallis, the man climbed up a 
ladder into the attic of his house. When the Sheriff attempted to 
follow, the fugitive turned the ladder over and Sheriff Hill fell 
heavily to the floor. From his fall he received such injuries that 
he shortly after died. This was in 1800. 



THE REV. ABRAM SPURR HUNT, M. A. 

Eev. Abram Spurr Hunt, though not a native of King's County, 
was for many years, as Rev. Edward Manning's immediate succes- 
sor, pastor of the Cornwallis First Baptist Church. He was born at 
Clements, Annapolis county, April 7, 1814, grad. at Acadia in 
1844 (its second class), and on the 10th of Nov. of that year, was 
ordained over the newly formed Baptist Church at Dartmouth, 
N. S. In 1844 also, he married Catharine Johnstone, eldest sur- 
viving daughter of Lewis Johnston, M. D., and niece of Hon. 
Judge James William Johnstone, and in 1846, removed to Wolfville, 
where for a winter he studied theology under the Rev. Dr. Craw- 
ley. In 1847 he became assistant pastor to Rev. Edward Manning 
at Cornwallis, and in 1851, at Mr. Manning's death, succeeded to the 
pastorate. Until 1867 he continued pastor of the Cornwallis 
Church, his ministry being in every sense a successful one. His 
field of labour, however, was so wide and his duties so arduous that 
at last he was obliged to seek an easier parish. When he deter- 
mined to remove from Cornwallis, the Dartmouth Church recalled 



508 KING'S COUNTY 

him, and to that Church he continued to minister till his death, 
which occurred, October 23, 1877. In 1870 he was also made Super- 
intendent of Education for the Province, and the duties of this office 
he also discharged until his death. Mr. Hunt's children were: 
Eliza Theresa, married as his 2nd wife, to the Hon. Judge 
Alfred William Savary, of Annapolis, so well known as a 
jurist and historian (see among other writings, the Calnek-Savary 
''History of Annapolis," and the "Savary Family"); Lewis Gib- 
son, M. D., D. C. L., of London, England ; James Johnstone, D. C. L., 
Barrister of Halifax; Aubrey Spurr; Ella Maud, m. to the Rev. 
Arthur Crawley Chute, D. D,, Professor in Acadia University ; 
Rev. Ralph M., a clergyman, who died young, deeply lamented, 
Mrs. Abram Spurr Hunt, a woman of high breeding and exalted 
Christian character, survived her husband between seventeen and 
eighteen years. She died in Dartmouth, Halifax, May 29, 1895. 



THE RT. REV. CHARLES INGLIS, D. D. 

See Family Sketches. 



THE RT. REV. JOHN INGLIS, D. D. 

See Family Sketches. 



LEWIS JOHNSTONE, M. D. 

Lewis Johnstone, M. D., son of William Martin (or Moreton) 
and Elizabeth Lichtenstein Johnstone, was born in St. Augustine, 
Florida, Mar. 10, 1784, and was in the same year taken to Scot- 
land. He studied first at an academy at Queen's Ferry, near 
Edinburgh, but about 1801 joined his parents in the Island of Ja- 
maica. For four or five years he was a clerk in the mercantile 
house there, of a Mr. Lake, then he returned to Edinburgh and 
studied medicine. On the completion of his studies he settled in 
Jamaica and there practised his profession. About 1822, however, 
he removed to Halifax, N. S., and in that city, during an epi- 



BIOGRAPHIES 509 

demic of smallpox and typhus fever in 1827, he was assiduous in 
caring for the sick. The report of the Committee of the House of 
Assembly (Journal of 1828, Feb. 22) calls this epidemic "a mor- 
tality in this town unknown from its earliest settlement, having 
swept off from a population of 11,000, upwards of 800 persons." 
The report also praises the excellent conduct of Dr. Lewis John- 
stone, "who had devoted himself to the sick." The thanks of the 
House were voted to him. Murdoch, vol. 3, p. 585. 



JOHN LAIRD, ESQ. 

John Laird, of Horton, well known as a teacher, was the second 
son of Eobert Laird, a native of Ireland, who came to Nova Scotia 
shortly after 1760, and bought a farm in Lower Horton. John 
Laird, who was born Mar. 2, 1783, at about sixteen, went to Wind- 
sor Academy for six months, after that studying with the Rev. 
George Gilmore in Horton. He taught a private school for many 
years in Horton, calculated almanacs for both Nova Scotia and 
New Brunswick, and had a well deserved reputation for mathe- 
matical and classical learning. Among his pupils were: Rev. 
Charles DeWoKe, D. D. ; Rev. Henry Harris Hamilton, and Doctors 
Avery of Halifax, Edward L. Brown of "WolfviUe, Charles Cott- 
nam Hamilton of Cornwallis, and J. W. Harris. Mr. Laird died 
Sept. 6, 1842. His son was long a well known surveyor in Horton. 



DANIEL CHARLES MOORE, M. P. P. 

Daniel Charles Moore, M. P. P., born near what is now Canning, in 
Cornwallis, in 1800, was the youngest son but one of Col. William 
Charles and Elizabeth (Harrington) Moore. He died in Kent- 
ville, Oct. 12, 1890, and on the 15th, the following obituary of him 
appeared in a King's County newspaper: 

"On Sunday morning last, at 3 o'clock, one of the most highly 
esteemed men of this county, Mr. Daniel Moore, passed away. Mr. 
Moore was born in 1800, near where is now the town of Canning. 



510 KING'S COUNTY 

He belonged to a Loyalist family. His father is remembered as 
Col. Moore. His mother was a member of the Harrington family. 
In early life he was engaged in shipbuilding in St. John, a business 
which he afterward followed extensively in his native county. In 
1831 he and Mr. James Martin, late of Centreville, entered into 
partnership in the prosecution of a general mercantile business in 
Kentville. The partnership was shortly after dissolved, and Mr. 
Moore continued in business alone for many years, supplying every- 
thing that the farmer or lumberman required, and purchasing the 
product of the field or forest. In this way he accumulated a large 
fortune on paper, but owing to the natural kindliness of his dispo- 
sition, much that should have been his never came into his pos- 
session, being retained by needy or dilatory debtors whom he 
would not oppress. 

"In 1847 toward the close of the responsible government agita- 
tion, Mr. Moore was elected ta represent the county of King's in 
the House of Assembly, his colleague being Mr. John C. Hall. 
In 1851 he was re-elected. From 1855 he was not in the Legis- 
lature for some years. In 1861, on the death of Dr. W. B. Webster, 
vrho was one of the representatives elected in 1859, Mr. Moor6 was 
again called upon and contested the South Riding of King's county, 
being opposed by Dr. H. C. Masters. In this contest he was vic- 
torious by a small majority. He was again elected in 1863 and was 
a member of the legislature by which the confederation act was 
adopted. Of the policy of confederation he strongly disapproved, 
and though that policy was supported by the leaders of the party to 
which Mr. Moore had always belonged he gave it a firm and consci- 
entious opposition. From 1867 to 1871 Mr. Moore was not in Parlia- 
ment but in the general election which took place in the latter year he 
again took the field in conjunction with Mr. D. B. Woodworth, in 
opposition to the Annand-Vail government. The opposition can- 
didates were successful in King's county, and Mr. Moore sat in the 
legislature until the election of December 1874 when he was again 
a candidate but was defeated. This closed his political life; and 
since that time, now nearly sixteen years, he has taken but little 



BIOGRAPHIES 511 

part in public business. He has continued to reside in Kentville, 
where until a few months past, notwithstanding his great age, his 
well known face and form might often be seen upon the street. A 
stroke of paralysis last spring laid him aside, and since that time 
he has been gradually sinking, until, as has been said, he died on 
Sunday last. 

"Mr. Moore during his whole life, both public and private, won 
the esteem of all with whom he came in contact. Though engaged 
in politics for many years, and at very exciting times in our polit- 
ical history, he never made an enemy nor was ever a word whis- 
pered against his personal honesty or the sincerity of his professed 
opinions. The generation to which he belonged has passed aWay, 
the generation which he served in public and private life is rapidly 
following, and a generation is growing up to which Mr. Moore is 
scarcely known except by tradition. In the minds of these there 
exists a feeling of veneration for his memory which few public 
men can hope to share. The funeral took place yesterday, the 
Rev. Mr, Avery officiating. The interment was at the Oaks. A 
large attendance evidenced the respect entertained for the de- 
ceased gentleman." 

[We have unfortunately no facts at hand for a sketch of Stephen 
Harrington Moore, Q. C, brother of Daniel Charles Moore, who 
was for many years Judge of Probate for the county, and one 
of the most important lawyers in the province.] 



JAMES MORDEN, ESQ. 

James Morden, store-keeper of H. M. Ordnance, at Halifax, 
was a grantee in Aylesford in 1783, and there for many years had 
his summer residence. Except the name of Bishop Charles Inglis, 
none in the early history of Aylesford has so conspicuous a place 
as that of James Morden. Mr. Morden was an Englishman, but 
when he came to Halifax we do not know. When he died he left 
a wife Elizabeth, who was probably sister of the second wife of 
the distinguished Hon. Richard Bulkeley (who came to Halifax. 



512 KING'S COUNTY 

with Governor Comwallis in 1749 , and held the office of Provincial 
Secretary from about 1759 until 1793), for in his will he mentions 
his sister-in-law, Mary, wife of Eichard Bulkeley, Esq., Provincial 
Secretary. He made his will Feb. 28, 1791, the executors being, 
his wife, James Spry Heaton, and Alexander Thomson. In it he 
mentions also, his son, George Burgess Morden, his daughter, Mel- 
iora Burgess Dight, and Meliora F. Collier (the latter name would 
suggest that possibly one of his wives was a daughter of the Hon. 
John Collier). His daughter Meliora Burgess was m. in 1778, 
by the Bishop, to John Butler Dight, nephew of Hon. John Butler, 
M. L. C, who as his uncle's heir took the name of Butler (John 
Butler Butler, alias John Butler Dight, was the uncle of Col. 
Butler of Windsor, N. S.). In St. Paul's Parish Records we find 
that Charlotte Elizabeth Mary, dau. of James and Elizabeth Mor- 
den, was bap. July 13, 1773. James Morden, himself died Oct. 
29, 1792, and is buried in St. Paul's Burying-ground, Halifax. In 
the S. P. G. Report of 1793 it is said that the Rev. John Wiswall 
mentions with great concern the death of Mr. Morden, who was 
a great benefactor of the Church and a zealous supporter of that 
infant settlement." 

In the Record of King's County land transfers, we find that 
"George Foreman Morden of Scotland Yard, Whitehall, in the city 
of Westminster, Esquire, a captain in H. M. Army, and John Ed- 
ward BuUer, of the Inner Temple, in the county of Middlesex, 
gentleman," transfer land originally owned by James Morden, 
willed between the latter 's wife, James Spry Heaton, and Alex- 
ander Thomson, to "John Butler Butler, Esq., Commissary Gen- 
eral of H. M. Forces, now residing at Bouverie St., Fleet St., Lon- 
don," dates being. May 28, and 29, and June 1, 1833. Mr. James 
Morden 's will is recorded in Halifax. 



ELKANAH MORTON, M. P. P. 

In the History of Digby County will be found a sketch of El- 
kanah Morton, Jr., son of Elkanah and Rebecca Morton, and uncle 



BIOGRAPHIES 513 

of Hon. John Morton, M. L. C, born in Cornwallis July 26, 1761, 
and said to be "probably the first male child born in the township." 
At the age of fifteen Mr. Morton joined the militia in Cornwallis 
and very soon lost his right leg from the accidental discharge of 
a holster pistol in the hands of Lieut.-Governor Mariot Arbuthnot, 
at a militia review in his native town. Some time in his early 
life he removed to New Brunswick, and it is said was "in trade" on 
the St. John River, "where he had charge of building the Lord 
Sheffield, the earliest ship constructed in N. B." From 1792 till 
1796, however, we know that he was master of the S, P. G. "Indian 
school at Sussey Vale, for teaching white children." In 1794 he 
was commissioned a J. P. for King's county, N. B., in which county 
he lived. In 1802, at the urgent solicitation of Governor Went- 
worth he removed to Digby county, N. S., where he was at once ap- 
pointed a J, P. He was later, also, appointed Deputy Registrar of 
Deeds, Deputy Collector of Import and Excise; and also Preven- 
tive Officer for the Port, without salary. Later he filled the po- 
sitions of Judge of the Superior Court, and Judge of Probate for 
Digby and Clare. He was also the first Custos of Digby county. 
After the death in 1802 of Mr. Foreman, the S. P. G.'s first school- 
master at Digby, Mr. Morton took his place, and this office he held 
for some years. He was a strong Churchman, and a tombstone in 
Trinity Cemetery, Digby, records the fact that he died. May 14, 
1848, aged 87. He m. twice, but we do not know the names 
of his wives. John Elkanah Morton, a son by his first marriage, 
represented the town of Digby from 1827 to 1830; Lemuel Dean 
Morton, a son by his second marriage, a lawyer, was Registrar and 
Judge of Probate for Digby. 



MAJOR GEORGE ELKANA MORTON 

Major George Elkana Morton was one of King's County's most 
excellent and enterprising sons. He was a son of Hon. John and 
Anne (Cogswell) Morton, was born at Upper Dyke village, 
Cornwallis, March 25, 1811, and was one of the pupils of the Rev. 



514 KING'S COUNTY 

William Forsyth. Going to Halifax at about eighteen years of 
age he entered a drug store on Granville Street, which business 
he afterward purchased. In 1852 he erected the stone building at 
the corner of Granville and George Streets, long known as "Mor- 
ton's Corner," where for many years he conducted a wholesale 
and retail drug business, at that time the largest in the province. 
He was the first business man in Halifax to send out a commercial 
traveller. About 1870 he closed his drug business and opened 
a book and periodical store, and a lending library of current liter- 
ature. He retired from business in 1888, and died as the result 
of an accident, Mar, 12, 1892, and was buried in Dartmouth. 

Mr. Morton was a man of great intelligence, and of distinctly 
literary tastes, and his contributions to the press, both in prose 
and verse, were numerous. In 1852 he published, in conjunction 
with Miss Mary J. Katzmann, The Provincial^ a monthly magazine. 
Later he published a satirical magazine called Banter. In 1875 he 
wrote and published the first ''Guide to Halifax," and in 1883, a 
"Guide to Cape Breton." His newspaper articles appeared chiefly 
in the Guardian, the British Colonist, and other newspapers. He 
was unusually well read in English literature, and his writings 
contain many quotations from classical authors. He was an ac- 
complished letter writer, and for many years kept up an interesting 
correspondence with friends abroad, especially with his cousin. Dr. 
Charles Cogswell. He was one of the original members of the N. S. 
Historical Society, and was always actively interested in the work 
of that Society. In religion he was a Presbyterian, his membership 
being in St, Matthew's Church. In politics a Conservative, he was 
for many years a personal friend of Messrs. Johnstone, Tupper, 
Parker, Holmes, Marshall, and other Conservative leaders. He 
was an ardent supporter of confederation, and had great faith 
in the future of the Dominion. Nov. 23, 1859, he was appointed 
1st Lieut, in the 2nd Queen's Halifax Regt. ; Sept. 23, 1862, he was 
appointed Captain. On the reorganization of the militia by the 
Dominion Government he was retired with the rank of Major. He 
was one of the promoters of the N. S. Telegraph Company, was an 



BIOGRAPHIES 515 

original shareholder of the N. S. Sugar Refinery, and shortly after 
the discovery of gold in 1860, became interested in gold-mining. 
He held mining claims at Waverly, Montagu, Elmsdale, and Law- 
rencetown. 

George Elkana Morton married in Halifax, in March, 1849, Mar- 
tha Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Christian Conrad Casper and 
Martha (Prescott) Katzmann, born Apr. 2, 1823, died Apr. 6, 1899. 
He had children: Annie, born Dec. 13, 1850, died Mar. 29, 1855; 
Charles Cogswell, born Aug. 14, 1852, married Apr. 27, 1905, Wini- 
fred, daughter of Leonard and Lucy Leadley, of Dartmouth, N. S., 
and now resides in Kentville. 

For the Katzmann Family, see the Prescott Family Sketch. 



HON. JOHN MORTON, M. L. C. 

Hon. John Morton, M L. C, son of Lemuel and Martha (New- 
comb) Morton, born in Cornwallis, Mar. 25, 1781, was locally one 
of the most distinguished of King's County's sons. He received 
a captaincy in the militia in 1810, and was made Lieutenant Col- 
onel (of the Sixth Regiment) in 1835. In 1827 he was chosen to 
represent Cornwallis in the Assembly; in 1835 he was made a 
Justice of the Peace, and Commissioner of Sewers and Dykes; and 
in 1841 he was appointed a member of the Legislative Council. In 
1846 he was commissioned by Lord Falkland, Lieutenant Governor, 
Keeper of the Rolls for Cornwallis. ''He was an influential owner 
and director of the "Western Stage Coach, the Cornwallis Bridge, 
and the Electric Telegraph Companies. It is doubtful if any pub- 
lic man in, or originating in. King's County has ever enjoyed more 
fully than Mr. Morton the county's confidence and esteem. It 
was he who gave the name Upper Dyke Village, to the Corn- 
wallis hamlet where he lived. He married, April 28, 1810, Anne, dau. 
of Capt. Mason and Lydia Huntington) Cogswell, born June 16, 1785, 
died in 1846. His children were prominent ; for a list of them see Fam- 
ily Sketches. Hon, John Morton died at his son, George Elkana 's, 
in Halifax, Mar. 3, 1858. He is buried at Chipman's Corner, and 



516 KING'S COUNTY 

the epitaph on his tombstone says: "He Served his God as an 
exemplary Son and Brother, Husband, Father, Friend, and Patriot." 



PROFESSOR SIMON NEWCOMB, LL.D., D. C. L. 

Professor Simon Newcomb, the great astronomer, although born 
in Cumberland county. Mar. 12, 1835, was of the Cornwallis New- 
comb family. He was graduated from the Harvard Scientific School 
in 1858, and was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy 
in the U. S. Navy, and assigned to duty at the U. S. Naval Observa- 
tory at Washington, in 1861. In 1877 he became senior professor of 
Mathematics and director of the office of the American Ephemeris 
and Nautical Almanac. This position he held until Mar. 12, 1897, 
when having attained the age limit of 62, he was pensioned by the 
U. S. Government. He married in Washington, D. C, Aug. 4, 
1863, Mary Caroline, dau. of Dr. Charles Augustus Hassler, of 
the U. S. Navy, and his wife, Anna Josepha (Nourse), and had 
three daughters, and a son, who died almost immediately after birth. 
The scientific writings of Dr. Newcomb, and the honours he re- 
ceived in Europe and America, are almost without number. He was 
a D. C. L. of Oxford, and an LL.D. of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cra- 
cow (Austria), Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, 
Columbia (D. C), and Toronto. A bibliography of his writings 
was published in 1905 by his relative, Professor R. C. Archibald, M. 
A., Ph. D. (now of Brown University), who through his mother, is 
also descended from the King's County Newcomb family. Profes- 
sor Newcomb died in Washington, July 11, 1909. 



THE REV. ROBERT NORRIS 

The Rev. Robert Norris, Rector of St. John's Parish, Cornwallis, 
from 1806 to 1829, was an Englishman, born in 1763, or '64, and 
originally, it is said, a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. As 
a missionary of the S. P. G. he was sent to Halifax, which city 
he reached some time in 1797, after a passage of twenty-four days 
from Torbay. At first he is recorded as an itinerant missionary in 



BIOGRAPHIES 517 

the Province, but probably very soon after his arrival he was ap- 
pointed to succeed the Rev, Thomas Lloyd at Chester, the latter 
clergyman having perished in a journey from Chester to Windsor, 
in February, 1795. He married, probably while he was Rector of 
Chester, Lydia F., daughter of Dr. Jonathan and Ann (Blackden) 
Prescott, b. May 12, 1775, d. Aug. 29, 1826, a sister of Hon. 
Charles Ramage Prescott, of Cornwallis. In 1801 he removed to 
New Brunswick, and there he remained until his settlement in 
Cornwallis in 1806. He died, October 16, 1834, in his 71st year, 
and both he and his wife are buried in the Fox Hill Burying- 
ground, near Town Plot, in Cornwallis. His children were: Mary 
Ann, born May 16, 1801, who inherited her father's place at Town 
Plot, and died June 13, 1880; Susanna Byles, born June 4, 1804, 
died Sept. 26, 1812; Catharine Eliza, born Oct. 25, bap, Dec. 21, 
1806, married Nov. 12, 1825, to Thomas Merritt, of St. John, N. B., 
who was City Chamberlain for many years till his death. The 
Merritts had, at least, one son, the Rev. Robert Norris Merritt, who 
removed to the United States. The following note concerning Mrs. 
Norris is found on the Register of St. John's Church: "Lydia F. 
Norris, the wife of the Rev. Robt. Norris, died at St. John, N. B., 
whither she had gone to be with her daughter during her con- 
finement. She was brought to Cornwallis to be buried. She was 
51 years of age. She was an affectionate wife, a tender mother, 
a kind friend, and a pious Christian." 



PETER PINEO, M. D. 

Peter Pineo, M. D. (son of Peter Pineo of Cornwallis, who died 
in 1869) was born in Cornwallis in 1825, at the age of seventeen 
began the study of medicine in the office of Dr. Charles Cottnam 
Hamilton, and in 1846 entered the Harvard Medical School. In 
1847, however, he went to the Bowdoin College medical school, 
where he graduated. He practised his profession in Barnstable, 
Groton, and Boston, Mass., and became a professor of or lecturer 
on Medical Jurisprudence and Chemical Medicine at Casselton Med- 



518 KING'S COUNTY 

ical College in Vermont. In 1861, when the Civil War broke out, 
he was commissioned by Governor Andrew, Surgeon of the 9th 
Mass. Eegt., with which he went to the war. In August, 1861, he was 
commissioned by President Lincoln, Brigade Surgeon of U. S. Vol- 
unteers, ,and in 1861-2, served in the field in Virginia, on the staffs 
of Gen. James S. Wadsworth, and Gen. Kufus King. He was on 
the staff of Major-General George G. Meade, as Medical Director 
of the First Army Corps at Antietam and South Mountain, and 
then was ordered to Washington in command of the U. S. Doug- 
las General Hospital of six hundred beds. In March, 1863, he 
was commissioned Lieut.-Col. and Medical Inspector of the U. S. 
Army, and in 1863-4 inspected every force on the Atlantic coast, 
from Washington to Texas, including the great hospitals at Fortress 
Monroe, Norfolk, and Portsmouth. When Jefferson Davis was a 
prisoner at Fortress Monroe, Dr. Pineo was his consulting surgeon. 
In Jan. 1866, he returned to Massachusetts and settled in Hyannis, 
where until 1880 he was in charge of the U. S. Marine Hospital 
Service for the District of Barnstable, practising generally as a 
surgeon throughout the county. The rest of his life he spent 
in Boston, where he died. He was fifty years a member of the 
Mass. Medical Society, and for a long time one of its Councillors. 
He was a Companion of the Loyal Legion of the U. S. 



HON. CHARLES RAMAGE PRESCOTT, M. L. C. 

Hon. Charles Ramage Prescott, named apparently, for Charles 
Ramage, a well known South Carolinian, was for many years one 
of King's County's foremost citizens. His father was Dr. Jona- 
than Prescott, whose first wife was a Vassal of Cambridge, and his 
mother was Ann (Blackden). The Prescott family was connected 
with the Bulkeley, Hoar, and other New England families of note. 
Dr. Jonathan Prescott was at the capture of Louisburg, and after 
that event he settled in Nova Scotia. Hon. Charles Ramage Pres- 
cott was born in Halifax, Jan. 6, 1772, and married, first, in Com- 



BIOGRAPHIES 519 

wallis, Feb 6, 1796, Rev. Wm. Twining officiating, Hannah, daugh- 
ter of John and Elizabeth (Longfellow) Whidden; second, in Hali- 
fax, Rev. Robert Stanser officiating, Maria Hammell. He was first 
a merchant in Halifax, but on account of failing health, between 
1811 and 1814 he removed to Cornwallis. There, near Town Plot, 
he bought land and built a fine colonial brick house, which is 
still standing. His place he called "Acacia Grove." He died in 
Cornwallis, June 11, 1859, in his 88th year. 

The "Prescott Memorial," published in 1870, says: "Mr. Pres- 
cott was one of the first merchants of Halifax until 1812, when he 
retired with a handsome fortune (at the age of 40). His health 
failing, he was .advised to go to Cornwallis, King's county, be- 
yond the reach of the fogs. There he entered largely into the 
pursuits of horticulture and fruit culture. He built large and 
extensive green and hothouses, and succeeded in raising in the 
open air against walls, the Isabella grape, which even in that 
northern climate flourished and produced abundantly. His 
peaches were pronounced excellent. He was an honorary mem- 
ber of the horticultural societies of Boston, New York, and Lon- 
don, and he was the first man who undertook to promote and im- 
prove fruit growing in that section of the country. He was very 
liberal, always giving scions, etc., to all who asked for them. He 
was a niember, in turn, of both branches of the legislature." Mr. 
Prescott represented the town of Cornwallis from 1818 to 1820, and 
in 1825, on the death of Hon. Charles Hill, was admitted to H. M. 
Council. In an obituary of him in the Nova Scotian newspaper 
the writer says that the press of Nova Scotia has never recorded 
the death of a worthier man; that there are many in all ranks 
of life who will bear willing testimony to his worth in private 
and in public life. His hospitable dwelling, it is further said, was 
the favourite resort of many successive governors. And to his nu- 
merous friends a visit to Mr. Prescott 's was considered one of the 
greatest treats. "In simplicity and goldly sincerity he had his 
conversation in the world, walking humbly with his God." 



520 KING'S COUNTY 

THE REV. JOHN PRYOR, D. D. 

Although the Rev. Dr. Pryor was born in Halifax, July 4, 1805, 
he was so long a resident of King's County and his name is so 
closely identified with the early history of Horton Academy and 
Acadia University that it is fitting that a brief account of him 
should be given here. His father was one of the influential se- 
ceders from St. Paul's Church, Halifax, who gave their influence 
to the Baptist body in Nova Scotia; consequently the Rev. Dr. 
Pryor, although reared in the Anglican Church, about the time he 
attained his majority, with other members of his father's family 
joined the secession movement to the Baptist faith. He was grad- 
uated B. A., at King's College, Windsor, in 1824, M. A. in 1831, 
after his graduation for some time teaching in Sydney and Halifax. 
Finally, however, he decided to study for the Baptist ministry, and 
for that purpose went to the Newton Theological Institute, in Mass. 
In 1830 he was ordained, and he then became Principal of Horton 
Academy; this position he held until 1838. In January, 1839, Aca- 
dia College was opened, and he and his friend, the Rev. Dr. Craw- 
ley, were appointed its first professors. Dr. Pryor 's chair was that 
of Classics and Natural Philosophy. From 1847 to 1850, he was 
President of the college and Professor of Theology, and again in 
1862-3 Professor of Belles Lettres. In 1850 he became pastor of 
the First Baptist Church of Cambridge, Mass., but he returned to 
Nova Scotia in 1861. In 1863 he became pastor of the Cranville 
St. Church in Halifax and this position he held until 1867. After 
this time he was for a short time pastor of two different churches 
in Massachusetts. His last years, however, were spent in Halifax, 
where he died. In 1848 Acadia College conferred on the Rev. 
John Pryor (and also on the Rev. John Mockett Cramp) the de- 
gree of Doctor of Divinity. 

Dr. Pryor was a cultivated, courtly man, and like his colleague, 
the Rev. Dr. Crawley, helped give distinction to the Baptist 
body in Nova Scotia. From the pulpits of King's County 
in which he often officiated, as well as from the professor's chair 
he filled, went forth an influence that far and wide throughout the 



BIOGRAPHIES 521 

province made for high breeding and a dignified worship of 
God. He died in Halifax, Aug. 17, 1892, and was buried at Camp 
Hill cemetery. See the Pryor Family. 



CALEB HANDLEY RAND, ESQ. 

Caleb Handley Rand, son of Mayhew and Elizabeth (Beckwith) 
Band, was born in Cornwallis, Aug. 27, 1790, married in Kentville, 
Nov. 20, 1824, Rebecca, eldest daughter of Joseph, M. P. P., and Alice 
(Harding) Allison, and died in Kentville Sept. 14, 1875. As one of 
the prominent merchants of Kentville he amassed a considerable 
fortune and achieved a good deal of influence. At some period 
in his career, removing the old Allison house, which he had bought, 
he built the Colonial house now for many years the residence of 
Lt. Col. "Wentworth Eaton Roscoe, K. C. For many years before 
Mr. Rand's death this house was closed, but the beautiful garden 
about it, long under the efficient care of Peter Redmond, a skill- 
ful gardener, was a delight to many eyes. The old house, which 
Mr. Rand removed further down what is now Leverett Lane, was 
for many years the property and the home of Brenton Halli- 
burton Harris, fifth son of the Hon. James Delap Harris, and after 
his death until the family was broken up by successive deaths, the 
home of Mrs. Brenton H. Harris and her mother and sisters, Mrs. 
Maria Starr Hamilton, and the Misses Susan and Minetta Hamilton. 
Caleb Handley Rand and his family were worshippers at St. John's 
Parish Church, Cornwallis, and later Mr. Rand, himself, at St. 
James', Kentville, on the south wall of which a tablet to his 
daughter, Elizabeth, rests. Mrs. Rand died July 23, 1833, and both 
husband and wife are buried in St, John's Churchyard, Cornwallis. 

Caleb Handley Rand was a brother-in-law of Samuel Leonard 
Allison, Prothonotary for King's for over twenty years, who then 
removed to Queen's County, where he died. The father of Rebecca 
(Allison) Rand and Samuel Leonard Allison was Joseph Allison, 
M. P. P., born in Ireland probably about 1755, who from 1799 to 
1806 represented Horton in the legislature, and for many years was 



522 KING'S COUNTY 

an active public man. He lived for a long time in Kentville, in the 
house we have mentioned as having been bought by his son-in-law, 
Mr. Rand. Of King's County families none have had more mem- 
bers worthy of recognition in these biographies than the Allison 
family, but our list of biographies here has to be incomplete. 



EBENEZER RAND, ESQ. 

Ebenezer Rand, son of John and Margaret (Mackenzie) Rand, 
and grandson of John and Katharine (Athearn) Rand, was born in 
Cornwallis, Jan. 29, 1820, and married Oct. 25, 1852, 
Ann Isabella, eldest daughter of "Ward and Eunice Deborah 
(Eaton) Eaton, of Cornwallis. For more than a quarter 
of a century Mr. Rand occupied the important office in the county 
of Collector of Customs, after the confederation of the provinces 
being made Chief Collector for the county. A high testimony to the 
efficiency of his administration of his office is the fact that he 
held it through many successive changes of government. On his 
superannuation in 1888 he was succeeded by his son Frederic C. 
Rand, who still occupies the office. Mr. Rand also owned a fine 
place at Canning, which is now in the hands of his son Fenwick 
Williams Rand. His eldest son, the eminent Dr. Benjamin Rand, 
has frequent notices in this book. His only daughter, Laura Fran- 
cesca, is the wife of Noble Crandall. One of her sons, Charles 
Crandall, is an editor in Halifax, another, Noble Crandall, Jr., is 
a broker in Chicago. Ebenezer Rand died April 17, 1889; his 
wife died Apr. 4, 1907, at the advanced age of 88. 



HENRY WALTER RAND, M. A., M. D. 

Dr. Henry Walter Rand, an eminent Brooklyn, N. Y., physician 
and surgeon, son of James and Sarah (Reid) Rand, of Canning, 
was born, Dec. 28, 1851, and graduated at Acadia University, B. A., 
1873, M. A., 1877. His medical studies were taken at Bellevue, 



BIOGRAPHIES 523 

New York, and in 1877-78 he was resident physician and surgeon 
at the Brooklyn Hospital. In 1878-81 he was attending surgeon at 
the Orthopedic Infirmary, Brooklyn, and in 1881-84, surgeon at the 
Long Island College Hospital Dispensary. After that, till his death, he 
was surgeon to the Long Island College Hospital, He also held in 
Brooklyn medical circles other important posts. He was the author 
of numerous articles and monographs on surgical subjects. He 
married, Feb. 19, 1865, Sarah L. Edwards, of Brooklyn, and had 
two children. His distinguished medical career came to an end 
suddenly. He died of overwork, Aug. 30, 1895. 



THE REV. SILAS TERTIUS RAND, D. D., D. C. L. 

The Rev. Dr. Silas Tertius Rand one of the most distinguished 
scholars the Dominion of Canada has produced, was born at Brooklyn 
Street, Cornwallis, about six miles from Kentville, May 18, 1810. 
He was the son of Silas and his second wife, Deborah (Tupper), 
Rand, his mother being a sister of the Rev. Charles Tupper, D. D., 
and he himself, therefore, a first cousin of the eminent Canadian 
statesman, Sir Charles Tupper, Bart. Dr. Rand studied at Horton 
Academy, and though he did not take a college course, afterward 
gave himself so devotedly to the study of languages that he be- 
came proficient in not only English, but Latin, Greek, French, 
Italian, Spanish, and the Algonquin Micmac tongue. He was ad- 
mitted to the Baptist ministry and held pastorates at Horton, Liv- 
erpool, Windsor, and Charlottetown, P. E. I., but in 1846 he dedi- 
cated his life to missionary work among the Micmacs. Assisted 
by a French Canadian, Joe Brooks, who had lived almost all 
his life among the Indians, he learned Micmac and henceforth for 
upwards of twenty years laboured under the undenominational 
Micmac Missionary Society in Nova Scotia, at a salary of two 
hundred pounds a year. After 1864, however, he depended solely 
upon voluntary gifts from Christians of various sects. His home 
was at Hantsport, in Hants county, but he constantly travelled the 



524 KING'S COUNTY 

length and breadth of the Province, and whenever occasion seemed 
to require it visited the Miemacs in the County of King's. 
Fortunately for our knowledge of the language and customs of 
the natives of the Province, Dr. Rand was not only an earnest 
missionary of religion, but was a devoted student of native Indian 
philology and legend lore. In the Introduction to his Legends of 
the Miemacs, published by Longmans and Green in the Wellesley 
College Philological Publications, in 1894, are given no less than 
forty-four titles of books and monographs, besides a list of thirty- 
eight manuscripts, chiefly on Micmac subjects, the greatest of 
which is an "English-Micmac Dictionary of the Language of the 
Micmac Indians, in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward 
Island, Cape Breton, and Newfoundland," published in 1888. 

Dr. Rand has been called the Elihu Burritt of Canada, and he 
well deserved the name. He possessed a marvellous memory and 
wonderful linguistic power; he was a man of remarkable energy 
and ability (and we may add, of dramatic power in public speak- 
ing). The work which he accomplished was unique. The value 
of his research in the Micmac and Maliseet languages will 
become more and more apparent as the attention of philoso- 
phers turns more and more to the aboriginal languages of Amer- 
ica. He has translated into Micmac almost the entire Bible, he 
has compiled a dictionary in that language of more than forty 
thousand words, and he has in addition furnished to the philologist 
a large amount of other valuable linguistic material. He was the 
discoverer of Glooseap, whom Charles G. Leland describes as "by 
far the grandest and most Aryan-like character ever evolved from 
a savage mind. ' ' 

Among other remarkable literary achievements of Dr. Rand was 
the translation into Latin of about a hundred well known hymns, 
such as: "Abide With Me"; "A Mighty Fortress is Our God"; 
"From Greenland's Icy Mountains"; "Guide Me, O Thou Great 
Jehovah"; "Jesus, Refuge of My Soul", and "Rock of Ages, Cleft 
for Me." Dr. Silas Tertius Rand died in October, 1889. 



BIOGRAPHIES 525 

THEODORE HARDING RAND, M. A., D. C. L. 

Dr. Theodore Harding Kand, son of Thomas Woodworth and 
Eliza Irene (Barnaby) Rand, descended on both his father's and 
mother's sides from the Eaton family, was born in Cornwallis, Feb, 
8, 1835, and graduated at Acadia University, B. A., 1860, M. A., 
1863. Entering the profession of teaching he was connected suc- 
cessively with Horton Academy, and the Provincial Normal School. 
In the preparation of the Free School Act, which passed in 1864, 
he took a leading part, and shortly after he was made Superintend- 
ent of Education for the Province. In 1871 he accepted the position 
of Superintendent of Education for New Brunswick. This office he 
resigned in 1883 to accept the chair of Education and His- 
tory in his alma mater. In 1885 he removed to Toronto 
where for a year he filled the chair of Apologetics 
and Didactics in McMaster Hall. He then became Prin- 
cipal of the Baptist College at Woodstock, Ontario. 
In 1888 he returned to McMaster, which had now become a 
university. In 1892 he became Vice Chancellor of this college, but 
on account of ill health filled the vice-chancellorship only three 
years. After that, until his death he was professor in McMaster 
of Education and English History. In Nova Scotia he established 
the ''Journal of Education," In New Brunswick he organized an 
Educational Institute for the Province, of which he became presi- 
dent. In 1897 he published "At Minas Basin and Other Poems," 
a volume which earned for him in some quarters the title of "the 
Browning of Canada." In 1900 he published "A Treasury of 
Canadian Verse," which is a lasting literary monument to his name. 
He died, May 29, 1900. 

Dr. Rand married, Nov. 5, 1861, his first cousin once removed, 
Emeline Augusta, youngest daughter of David and Susanna 
(Strong) Eaton, who has published among other things, "In a 
National Gallery: four letters on the Development of Italian Art." 
Dr. Theodore Harding Rand had no children. A portrait of him by 
J. W, L, Forster hangs in one of the buildings of McMaster Uni- 
versity. 



526 KING'S COUNTY 

WILLIAM REDDEN, ESQ. 

"William Redden was one of the most enterprising men King's 
County has ever had. He came to Kentville from Windsor in 1842, 
and was long actively engaged in farming, trading, milling, and 
the development of real estate. He bought much land and built 
many houses to sell and rent. A large number of the houses in 
that part of Kentville known as the "Flat" are the result of his 
enterprise. At the time of his death, Dec. 4, 1894, the Kentville 
Advertiser, coupling his name with that of another well known citi- 
zen, Mr. George Dodge, who had recently died, said : 

"Within the last few days two of the landmarks of a former gen- 
eration have passed away from the view of Kentville citizens. Two 
of the oldest men of the town have died, each at the age of four- 
score years. There are few of the present inhabitants who are old 
enough or have lived here long enough to remember when these 
two men commenced their long and successful business career in 
Kentville. 

"The late William Redden, Esq., was in a marked degree indenti- 
fied for many years with the material growth and prosperity of 
the town. To his single-handed enterprise — it might almost be said 
to his own unaided manual toil — a large part of residential Kent- 
ville owes its existence. Until a short time ago, when advanced 
age compelled him to give up active labor, he was an indefatigable 
worker ; and to his foresight, courage, and industry the large num- 
ber of buildings he erected are an enduring monument. He died 
on Tuesday last and was buried yesterday at The Oaks." 



THE REV. THEOPHILUS STINSON RICHEY, M. A. 

The Rev. Theophilus Stinson Richey, from 1871 to 1876 incum- 
bent of St James' Church, KentviUe, was a son of the Rev. Dr. 
Matthew Richey, a Wesley an divine. He died in 1909, and in the 
Churchman of May 15th of that year, the following notice of him 
appeared : 

"The Rev. Theophilus Stinson Richey, formerly canon of St. 



BIOGRAPHIES 527 

Paul's cathedral. Fond du Lac, and later honorary canon of All 
Saints cathedral, Milwaukee, died of heart disease on Saturday, 
Apr. 24, in Wilmette, 111., his home in recent years. Canon Richey 
was in the forty-fifth year of his priesthood, having been ordained 
in 1864 by the Bishop of Fredericton. Although living in retire- 
ment for the past two years he had rendered much assistance to the 
clergy of Chicago and its suburbs, and last summer assumed charge 
of St. Augustine's church, Wilmette, Canon Richey was born six- 
ty-nine years ago in Toronto, and was educated at the Church of 
England Collegiate School, "Windsor, Nova Scotia, the Free Church 
Academy, Halifax, and Sackville College, New Brunswick. His 
first parish was at Petersville, N. B., and he worked for eighteen 
years in the diocese of Nova Scotia, under Bishop Binney. In 1883 
he became senior canon of St. Paul's cathedral, Fond du Lac, hold- 
ing this position until 1891^ when he assumed charge of the parish 
at Chippewa Falls and of St. Stephen's, Milwaukee, at the same 
time acting as trustee of Racine College and of Nashotah House. 
His later ministry was spent in the diocese of Chicago. 

"The funeral was conducted in St. Augustine's, Wilmette, on 
Apr. 27, by the Rev. Dr. Little and Archdeacon Toll. The pall- 
bearers were the Rev. Messrs. George C. Stewart, L. P. Edwards, 
H. A. Wilson, E. R. Williams, H. W. Starr and A. G. Richards. " 



THE REV. JOHN OWEN RUGGLES, M. A. 

Rev. John Owen Ruggles, M. A., once Vicar and once Rector 
of the parish of Horton, was a son of Israel Williams and Mary 
(Owen) Ruggles, of Annapolis, and a great-grandson of General Tim- 
othy Ruggles, the noted Loyalist, who settled in Nova Scotia in 
1783. He was born in Annapolis county, Feb. 8, 1840, entered 
King's College, Windsor, in 1854, was made B. A. in 1859, and 
M. A. in 1863, and was ordained Deacon in 1863, and Priest in 1864. 
From 1863 to 1871, he was Vicar and again, from 1878 to 1888, 
Rector of Horton. He married his first cousin, Catherine Eliza- 
beth, daughter of Daniel Owen, Barrister, of Lunenburg, and had 



528 KING'S COUNTY 

ten children. He was a devoted and faithful priest of the Angli- 
can Communion, and died suddenly at Windsor, in the performance 
of clerical duty, Sept. 23, 1895. He is buried in the Anglican 
Churchyard, at the "Three Mile Church," near Halifax. Most of 
his family, including his youngest son. Rev. Vernon Douglas Bug- 
gies, M. A,, live now in the United States. 



THE REV. WILLIAM SOMMERVILLE, M. A. 

The Rev. "William Sommerville, M. A., was born in the Parish of 
Drum Ballyroney, county Down, Ireland, July 1, 1800, an only 
son. In 1816 he entered the University of Glasgow, and there he 
distinguished himself as a student, especially in mathematics, logic, 
metaphysics, and moral philosophy. At the close of the fourth 
session he took the degree of M. A., and the next few years he 
spent chiefly in teaching, and in the study of theology at Paisley. 
In 1826 he was licensed to preach by the Southern Presbytery of 
the Reformed Presbyterian ("Covenanting") Church in Ireland, 
and in 1831 he was ordained as a "missionary to the Colonies." 
He then came from Londonderry to St. John, New Brunswick, 
and for a few months preached at Shepody, in Westmoreland 
county, and other places in N. B. where Covenanters were to 
be found. In 1832, however, he came to Horton, where the Rev. 
George Struthers had been labouring, and there remained until 
Mr. Struthers returned from Demerara in 1835. During this time 
owing to Mr. Forsyth's feebleness he preached once a month in 
the church at Chipman's Corner, Cornwallis, and it is said he 
sometimes preached in other places between Horton and Wil- 
mot. In 1835 he became pastor of a Congregation of Reformed 
Presbyterians or Covenanters, scattered from Lower Horton to West 
Cornwallis and Wilmot. 

In 1842, a group of Scotch-Irish Covenanters having settled at 
what is now Melvern Square, he organized a congregation in 
West Cornwallis, and a little later, one at Wilmot. In 1845 Mr. 
Sommerville removed his family from Horton to what is now 



BIOGRAPHIES 529 

called Woodville, in West Cornwallis, where he had bought a 
farm. Here he lived for eleven years, removing permanently to 
Somerset in 1856. During his residence in Horton, Woodville, 
and Somerset, until the adoption of the school law in 1864, dur- 
ing the winter months he taught a school, to which, in West Corn- 
wallis, pupils came from all parts of King's, as well as from 
Colchester and other counties. For much of the time this school 
was the main support of his family. Mr. Sommerville married 
first Sarah Barry, daughter of Robert McGowan Dickey, of Am- 
herst (and sister of Senator Barry Dickey), who died in 1853. 
He married, second, in 1854, Jane E., daughter of Joseph Cald- 
well, of Horton. He died Sept. 28, 1878. Mr. Sommerville 's 
was one of the strongest personalities the county ever has known. 
He was kind and genial in private intercourse, but in matters of 
doctrine he was as inflexible as iron. He opposed with all the 
vigor of his controversial nature the peculiar doctrines of Henry 
AUine, the Baptist practice of immersion, the use of uninspired 
hymns in the worship of God, and any other doctrine or prac- 
tise he believed to be contrary to Scripture. "An intense rever- 
ence for the things of God always possessed him, and these were 
never referred to by him lightly, or in his presence without re- 
proof." He had "a heart full of zeal for the truth of God's 
word," and he was of the stuff of which ancient Christian mar- 
tyrs were made. 

Mr. Sommerville 's son, Rev. Robert McGowan Sommerville, D. 
D., was graduated from Queen's University, Ireland, in 1860, and 
after his ordination returned to Nova Scotia. In 1866, he was 
appointed Inspector of Schools for King's County, and this office 
he held until 1873, when he resigned and went to the United 
States. In 1876 he became pastor of the Second Reformed 
Presbyterian Church of New York city, and in his New York pas- 
torate he still remains. He married in Cornwallis, Elizabeth, 
eldest daughter of William Henry and Sophia (Cogswell) Chip- 
man, but has no children. 



530 KING'S COUNTY 

COL. JOHN STARR, M. P. P. 

Col. John Starr, M. P. P., third son of David and Susannah 
(Potter) Starr, was born in Cornwallis, Feb. 20, 1775, married 
Dee. 28, 1797, Desiah, daughter of Moses, Jr., and Mary (New- 
comb) Gore, born May 23, 1780, died Dec. 30, 1827. Early in 
life Mr. Starr removed to Halifax, where he became an important 
and wealthy merchant and ship owner. The Starr family 
founded in America by Dr. Comfort Starr, were long es- 
tablished in and near Canterbury, Kent, and at some period in 
his career Col. John Starr registered the arms of the Can- 
terbury Starrs in the Herald's College, London. These are. Azure 
a pair of scales or balances within an orle of eight estoiles or, 
The crest of Starr of Halifax as given by Fairbairn is : A lion ram- 
pant ppr. Motto : Vive en espoir. Col. Starr was made colonel of 
the 3rd Halifax Kegiment of Militia, April 12, 1824. He repre- 
sented King's County in the legislature from 1827 to 1830. A 
list of his children who married, as given in the Starr Family 
sketch is: Margaret Sophia, married to Hon. James Ratch- 
ford, M. L. C. ; Hon. John Leander, M. L. C, married (1) 
Mary Sophia Ratchford, (2) in New Jersey, Frances Barberie 
Throckmorton; William Joseph, married (1) Matilda, dau. of Hon. 
Richard and Frances (Peniston) Peniston, (2) Mrs. Harriet (Rug- 
gles) Bartlett ; Mary Eliza, married to Elisha DeWolf , Jr. ; Susan 
Arabella, married to Admiral William Henry Jervis, R. N. ; Lueretia 
Jane, married to Hon. Judge Charles Young,, LL.D., brother of 
Sir William Young; Frederick Ratchford, married (1) Mary Jane 
Jarvis, (2) Henrietta Maria Atwood. (Col. John Starr was the 
author's great-great-uncle.) 



IVEAJOR SAMUEL STARR 

Major Samuel Starr, from the beginning, one of the chief per- 
sons among the early planters of Cornwallis, was one of a com- 
mittee of four appointed in Norwich Conn,, in 1759, to make ar- 
rangements with the Nova Scotia Government for the settlement 



BIOGRAPHIES 531 

of Connecticut people in the province, and that he was given this 
commission sufficiently indicates his prominence in eastern Con- 
necticut, Any one who knows the history of the beautitful old town 
of Norwich knows that among the most important of its early 
families were the Bushnells and Leffiingwells, and from both these 
families Major Starr was descended. His father was Samuel and 
his mother Anne (Bushnell) Starr, and he had two younger broth- 
ers, Jonathan, who did not settle in Nova Scotia, and David, who 
did. His first wife was Abigail, dau. of Capt. John and Sarah 
(Abell) Leffingwell, and he had a son Joseph, who also became a 
prominent man in Cornwallis. From this son Joseph, who in 1786 
returned to Norwich and married his first cousin, Joanna Starr, 
her mother also being a Leffingwell, are descended the Starrs, who 
for five generations have been among the chief land-owners at 
Starr's Point, near the original Cornwallis Town Plot, In a little 
burying-ground on a point near the Basin of Minas, the brothers 
Samuel and David Starr and their wives sleep, and the following 
article in a King's County newspaper a few years ago, tells of the 
erection of a tombstone to Major Samuel in this burying-ground. 

''This week our attention was called to a tablet which is now 
being erected to the memory of Major Samuel Starr, who was born 
in Norwich, Conn., Sept. 2nd, 1728, and died at Cornwallis, Aug. 
26th, 1799. For a century there has been no stone to mark the 
resting place of this pioneer, but now one is being placed at the 
cemetery at Starr's Point by seven of his great-grand-children, 

"Major Starr was the great-grandfather of the following who 
bear his name and reside in this county : Joseph Christopher Starr, 
Kentville, Major Robert William Starr, and Charles Richard 
Henry Starr, Wolfville, John Edward Starr, and Joseph Starr, 
Starr's Point, He was one of a committee sent to Nova Scotia by 
the people of Connecticut after the expulsion of the Acadians in 
1755. They wished to take up the land vacated by these unfor- 
tunate people and it was to be done in the name of a company. 
The committee visited Grand Pre and spied out the land, so as to 
report on their return. Tradition tells us that Mr. Starr in travel- 



532 KING'S COUNTY 

ling over the hills of Horton cast his eyes northward and over- 
looked the fertile township of Cornwallis. He left the rest of the 
committee and was absent ten day, the others thinking he was lost. 
But he spent the time exploring Cornwallis and when he returned 
to Connecticut he gave a minority report recommending settlement 
in the northern portion of this county. The following year peo- 
ple came from New England and settled in Horton and Major Starr 
and fifty-nine others with their families took up grants for the whole 
of Cornwallis and settled in that township. The township was di- 
vided into 63 sections, the 60 families taking each a section, one 
each being reserved for school, for church, and for public purposes. " 



HON. JUDGE JAMES STEADMAN, M. E. C. 

Hon. Judge James Steadman (William, John), was born Mar. 
27, 1818, probably in Moncton, N, B., and studying law, in Feb., 
1844, was admitted an attorney. Until Dec, 1866, he practised in 
Moncton, but after that he removed to Fredericton. In 1854 he was 
elected to the N. B. legislature for Westmoreland, and until 1865, 
except for one year, continued to represent that county. In May, 
1860, he was appointed a member of the Executive Council for 
N. B., as Postmaster General, and this position he continued to 
hold till 1865. In June, 1887, he was appointed one of the Judges 
of the County Court. He married (1) Julia Beckwith, of Fred- 
ericton, whose grandfather had come from Cornwallis, (2) Mrs. 
Emma Jane (Turnhall) Eing, born at Bear River, Digby county, 
N. S. By his first marriage he had one son, who died young ; by his 
second marriage he had no children. 



THE REV. JOHN STORES, B. A. 

The Rev. John Storrs, B. A., Rector of St. John's Church, Corn- 
wallis, was born in Yorkshire, England, and educated at Trinity 
College, Dublin. Coming to Nova Scotia, he was made Deacon 
(by Bishop John Inglis) in 1838, and Priest in 1840. During his 



BIOGRAPHIES 533 

diaconate he acted as curate of St. George's Church, Halifax, and 
in that parish, just before or just after his election to the rector- 
ship of Cornwallis, he married, May 6, 1841, Frances Sarah Went- 
worth, second daughter of Richard and Sarah Apthorp, (Morton) 
Cunningham, whose parents were married by the Rev. Dr. Gray on 
Tuesday evening, Aug. 22, 1809, "at the seat of Sir John Went- 
worth, Bart.," probably the ''Prince's Lodge," west of Halifax. 
The Hon. Perez Morton, of Boston, married Feb. 24, 1781, Sarah 
Wentworth Apthorp, whose portrait by Gilbert Stuart, after her 
death was owned by her grand-daughter, Mrs. Joseph Hart Clinch, 
of Boston. His daughter, Sarah Apthorp Morton, born June 2, 
1782, was m. Aug. 22, 1809, to Richard Cunningham, and died, 
July 14, 1844. The Cunninghams, who lived at Windsor, had 
children: Griselda Eastwick, born Aug. 16, 1810, married to the 
Rev. Joseph Hart Clinch, an Episcopal clergyman, who lived many 
years, and died in South Boston, Mass. ; Perez Morton, born May 
2, 1812, lived in Windsor and died, probably unmarried, Jan. 21, 
1866; Frances Sarah Wentworth, married as above, to the 
Rev. John Storrs; John; Charlotte, born Dec. 23, 1817, married 
June 2, 1836, to Dr. Howard Sargent, of Boston. See the Went- 
worth Genealogy, vol. 1, Richard Cunningham was perhaps a 
son of John Cunningham, who was appointed Superintendent of 
Indian Affairs in N. S., by Governor Parr. 

The first Mrs. John Storrs must have died very soon, for Mr. 
Storrs married (2) at Stanley, parish of St. Mary's, Yorkshire, 
England, June 27, 1844, (the Rev. J. W. D. Gray, formerly of 
Nova Scotia, officiating), Melanie, youngest daughter of the Rev. 
W. Hayne, Vicar of Plympton, Devonshire, England. By this 
marriage he had children born in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia : Melanie ; 
the Rev. John (for many years Vicar of St. Peter's Church, Eaton 
Square, London), b. Apr. 18, 1846; Mary Jane; Robert William; 
Arthur. The Rev. John Storrs was Rector of St. John's Church, 
Cornwallis, from 1841 till 1875, but in 1873 he went to England 
on two years leave of absence. At the end of his leave, he re- 
signed and remained in England. Since then, but one member of 



534 KING'S COUNTY 

his family, his son Robert William, has lived in Nova Scotia. Mrs. 
Melanie Storrs died in England, Apr. 10, 1877. 



GEORGE THOMSON, ESQ. 

George Thomson, for almost twenty years, till his death, identi- 
fied with the town of Wolfville, and for five consecutive years, 
from 1897 until 1902, its first Mayor, was born in Spital, Jamaica, 
Aug. 31, 1826, but in early life came with his family to Halifax. 
His brothers, James and Cathcart, were for many years well known 
lawyers in Halifax, Cathcart marrying Ellen, daughter of the 
Hon. Joseph Howe, and all were first cousins of Sir William 
Young, Kt., Nova Scotia's ninth Chief Justice. Of Sir William 
Young's estate, George Thomson was one of the two executors. 
Fond of country life, about 1888 he bought a place in Wolfville, 
and there spent the rest of his life. He married, Nov. 25, 1847, 
Eunice S., daughter of James Russell Lovett (M. P. P. for An- 
napolis), and his wife Sarah (Chipman), of Annapolis, her grand- 
parents on her father's side being, Phineas, M, P. P., and Abigail 
(Thayer) Lovett. George Thomson's children were: James T. ; 
Margaret, m. to Henry Chipman, M. D., of Grand Pre; Elizabeth 
Allison, m. to Edmund Jenner; Agnes Young; Edith. Mr. Thom- 
is called in an obituary notice, "a Christian citizen, a wise councillor, 
and a firm friend to all philanthropic and Christian objects." He 
died at Wolfville, Mar. 19, 1908. 



JAMES HALL THORNE, ESQ., B. A. 

James Hall Thorne B. A., Barrister, long a prominent person in 
Halifax, spent the last years of his life, and died, in Kentville. 
Of a New York Loyalist family, he was the eldest son of Stephen 
Sneden Thorne, M. P. P. for Granville, Annapolis county, and his 
wife Mehitable Paton (Hall) . James Hall Thorne was born in Bridge- 
town, Sept. 28, 1818, married Oct. 13, 1847, Mary (Robinson) Piper, 
and had children: Lydia Ann, m. to John B. Gray, of Halifax; 



BIOGRAPHIES 535 

James Hall, m, Jessie Kobson; Stephen Sneden, long in the Cana- 
dian Civil Service, m. Ada Sayre Harrison; Edward Lefferts, man- 
ager of the Union Bank in Nova Scotia, m. Jessie McNab; Living- 
ston Morse, d. young; Sancton, d. young; Sarah Frances Almon; 
Augusta Billing, m, to Leslie Seymour Eaton, youngest son of Wil- 
liam and Anna Augusta Willoughby (Hamilton) Eaton. James 
Hall Thome's father represented Granville, Annapolis county, in 
the legislature from 1836 to 1854, part of this time being a 
member of the Government, as Chairman of the Board of Public 
"Works. He is buried (as is his son James Hall) in Camp Hill 
Cemetery, Halifax. 

James Hall Thorne was graduated at King's College, Windsor, 
in 1840, admitted to the Nova Scotia Bar in 1844, and became 
Master of the Supreme Court and Registrar of the Court of Di- 
vorce. At the time of Confederation, he was Deputy Provincial 
Secretary (and for some time was acting Secretary), and for many 
years before his removal to Kentville was Chief of the Money 
Order Office in Halifax. He died May 8, 1887. Of his sisters, 
Havilah was m. to Timothy D wight Ruggles, Barrister, Q. C, 
M. P. P., of Bridgetown ; Anna was m. to Lewis Johnstone, Jr., M. D., 
son of Dr. Lewis and Mary Ann (Pryor) Johnstone of Jamaica, 
Halifax, and Wolfville, and was the mother of Mrs. Edwin Gilpin, 
3rd, of Halifax. 



THE REV. CHARLES TUPPER, D. D. 

The Rev. Charles Tupper D. D., son of Charles and Elizabeth 
(West) Tupper, and father of Sir Charles Tupper, Bart., was born 
in Cornwallis, Aug. 6, 1794, and died Jan. 19, 1881. At nineteen 
he became a schoolmaster and at a little less than twenty-two, 
began to preach. He was ordained in Cornwallis, as a Baptist 
minister, in 1819, and for over sixty years was in the active min- 
istry of this denomination. He was not educated at any college, 
but by his own efforts he gained sufficient acquaintance with the 
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, German, Italian, Spanish, Portu- 



536 KING'S COUNTY 

gese, "and four other languages" to be able to read the Bible in 
them. He held pastorates at Amherst, Nova Scotia, at Sackville, 
Fredericton, and St. John, New Brunswick, at Tyron and Bedeque, 
P. E. I., and finally at Lower Aylesford and Upper Wilmot in 
King's and Annapolis counties. He was a diligent and systematic 
pastor, a clear, vigorous writer, and an earnest and able preacher. 
See the Tupper Family. For many years he was one of the most 
prominent ministers of any denomination in Nova Scotia. 



HENRY BENTLEY WEBSTER, ESQ. 

Henry Bentley Webster, Barrister, long one of King's County's 
most eminent lawyers, was the youngest son of Dr. Isaac and Pru- 
dence Bentley Webster. He was born Sept. 21, 1811, and married 
about 1844, Ina Mary, only daughter of James Barclay, of Shel- 
burne. He died Jan. 3, 1879, and is buried in Oak Grove Ceme- 
tery. Mr. Webster was an elder, and was always deeply inter- 
ested in the Presbyterian Church. His wife was a devout com- 
municant of St. James Anglican Church, Kentville. She died 
May 14, 1864. Mr. Webster's house, ''The Chestnuts," which had 
previously belonged to his father, Dr. Isaac Webster, is now owned 
by Miss Alice Elizabeth Webster, Deaconess of the Protestant Epis- 
copal Church of the United States, a graduate of St. Faith's 
School for Deaconesses, in New York City. See the Webster 
Family. 



ISAAC WEBSTER, M. D. 

Among early King's county physicians. Dr. Isaac Webster was 
probably the most renowned. He was the eldest of the children of 
Moses and Elizabeth (Bennett) Webster, of Mansfield, Conn,, and 
a nephew of Abraham Wester, a Cornwallis grantee. Following 
his uncle's family to Cornwallis, he married there, Oct. 30, 1794, 
Prudence, dau. of David and Ann Bentley, born May 19, 1773. 
His children will be found in the sketch of the Webster family. 



BIOGRAPHIES 537 

It is said that in Cornwallis, before Dr. Webster came there, there 
was a physician named Woodbury, who finding the practice, es- 
pecially in obstetrics, larger than he could attend to, sent to Con- 
necticut for a Dr. Thomas Webster. This physician came to Corn- 
wallis, but staid only a short time, and about 1794 his place was 
taken by Dr. Isaac Webster, who, it is further said, before coming 
to Cornwallis had practised for a while in Yarmouth, and also in 
Newport, Hants county. To the latter place, it is said, he had 
been called by an epidemic of small-pox which was raging there. 
Dr. Isaac Webster's practice in the county soon became very large. 
At precisely what time he settled in Kentville we do not know, 
but he built here, probably in 1813, the house, known as "The 
Chestnuts," in which later, for many years, his son Henry Bentley 
Webster, Barrister, and his family, lived. 

In all the early interests of Kentville, Dr. Webster had an im- 
portant share, one of his own enterprises being the construction 
of a Masonic Hall, which, however, as we have seen in the chapter 
on Kentville, never came to completion. Valuable relics that have 
come down to the present are his sign, on which is a mortar, with 
a lion holding the pestle, and a man in the background; and a 
sun dial, which he used. Dr. Webster was an ardent Free Mason, 
and a staunch Presbyterian. He died in Kentville, Oct. 29, 1851, 
his wife also dying there, Feb. 15, 1851. Both husband and wife 
are buried in the Chipman's Corner Burying Ground. 



LIEUTENANT L. BEVERLEY BARCLAY-WEBSTEE 

Lieut. L. Beverley Barclay-Webster, only son of Barclay Webster, 
Barrister, M. P. P., and his wife, Ethel Sophia (Chipman), was born 
Sept. 15, 1878, and was educated at Lennoxville College 
in Canada, and at the University of McGill. In 1900 
he entered the King's Own Lancaster Regiment (Imperial 
Army), as ensign, gaining his First-Lieutenancy in six weeks. 
In June, 1900, he was sent to South Africa in command 
of a draft of men for active service for eighteen months. 



538 KING'S COUNTY 

In December, 1901, he returned to England invalided, and was 
placed for treatment in the Countess of Dudley's Hospital. He 
died in this hospital, Mar. 22, 1902, and his body received mili- 
tary burial in Oak Grove Cemetery in Kentville. At his grave is 
an exquisite marble monument given by the officers of his regi- 
ment. His name is also inscribed on a monument to the men who 
served from Nova Scotia in the South African war, within the in- 
closure of the Province Building, in Halifax. 



WILLIAM BENNETT WEBSTER, M. D. 

Dr. William Bennett Webster, son of Dr. Isaac Webster, and his 
father's successor in practice in Horton and Cornwallis, was born 
Jan. 18, 1798, and married Sept. 11, 1826 (Rev. Joseph Wright, of 
St. John's Church, Cornwallis, officiating), Wilhelmina, daughter 
of Col. Wm. Charles and Elizabeth (Harrington) Moore. He 
graduated in medicine at Edinburgh, and after that travelled for 
some time on the Continent. About 1822, however, he returned to 
Nova Scotia and settled in Kentville. He inherited considerable 
property in Kentville, and by his practice and by in- 
vestment, acquired much more. Like his father he 
was a man of strong individuality, and like him was a 
Presbyterian. He too was for many years closely identified 
with the best interests of Kentville, the shire town. His house in 
the grove of maples in the west part of Kentville, was bought by 
him from Mr. William Hunt, who built it, and who himself stud- 
ied medicine with Dr. Bayard, and afterward removed to St. John. 
Dr. Wm. Bennett Webster was a man of much mechanical clever- 
ness, as well as ability in his practice, and at the date of the writ- 
ing of this book there are many persons still living who well re- 
member the picturesque wooden moose with branching antlers, 
made by his own hands, that for almost a generation stood among 
the maple trees beside the doctor's house. Dr. Webster was also 
an enthusiastic geologist, and the large and valuable collection 
of mineralogical specimens which he made, he presented to the 



BIOGRAPHIES 539 

Provincial Museum at Halifax. He died April 4, 1861, and is 
buried, as is his wife, who died April 10, 1885, in Oak Grove Ceme- 
tery. 

JOHN WELLS, M. P. P. 

John Wells, M. P. P., of a distinguished Connecticut family, his 
parents being Capt. Judah and Ann (Bigelow) Wells, was born in 
Comwallis, Sept. 28, 1772, and married, Oct. 31, 1793, Prudence, 
dau. of David and Deborah (White) Eaton, born Oct. 13, 1774. 
His brother, Capt. Judah Wells, Jr., m. Eleanor Simpson, and was 
the father of James Simpson Wells, R. N. (father of Lydia Norris 
Wells, m. to Frederick Brown, of Horton). His brother, Asael, 
married Eliza, daughter of Jonathan Prescott, M. D. and sister of 
Hon. Charles Ramage Prescott; and his sister Eunice was married 
to David Eaton, Jr., his wife's brother. John Wells was a pros- 
perous merchant, his house standing at Habitant Corner (Can- 
ning), "opposite the old Pineo house." There for many years he 
held a magistrate's court, "ruling it with a rod of iron, and with 
the dignity of an eastern prince." He was a member of the Pro- 
vincial Legislature, in all for eighteen years. The names of his 
children will be found in the Family Sketches. 



SAMUEL WILLOUGHBY, M. D., M. P. P. 

The earliest physician, so far as we know, in King's County 
after the expulsion of the French was Dr. Samuel Willoughby, 
one of the Connecticut grantees of July 21, 1761. Dr. Willough- 
by 's ancestry and a record of his family will be found in the Fam- 
ily Sketches. He probably practised his profession in Cornwallis 
from his arrival in the county until his death at some time be- 
tween 1776 and 1790. He represented Cornwallis in the legisla- 
ture in 1761, 1770, and from 1774 to '76. His wife Alice (Eng- 
lish) was married secondly, as his 2nd wife, to David Eaton, founder 
of the King's county Eaton family. Dr. Willoughby is undoubt- 
edly buried in the Chipman Corner CJhurehyard. 



540 KING'S COUNTY 

THE REV. HARRY LEIGH YEWENS 

The Rev. Harry Leigh Yewens, born in London, Eng., June 24, 
1825, was the youngest child of William and Mary (Pomeroy) 
Yewens. His family's name is said originally to have been Ewens, 
but some time before the 19th century to have been locally 
changed. When he arrived at young manhood, for some time Mr. 
Yewens taught in the parish schools of All Saints, Islington, but 
in August, 1846, he was sent out by the S. P. G. as Catechist and 
Teacher to the islands of Campobello and Deer Island, New Bruns- 
wick. For three years he lived in these islands, teaching and 
holding religious services, but in August, 1849, he returned to Lon- 
don. For a year he studied for the ministry, probably in one of 
the English missionary training colleges, at the same time teaching 
in the parish schools and acting as Scripture Reader, in the "Dis- 
trict pf Berwick Street." In July, 1850, he was sent out as school 
master and catechist, to Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia. In 1852, by 
the Bishop of Nova Scotia, he was ordained Deacon, and the next 
year, in St. Paul's Church, Halifax, Priest, and while in Deacon's 
Orders was sent to Cornwallis to assist temporarily the Rev. John 
Storrs, who at the time was somewhat out of health. 

In April, 1853, he was appointed curate to Mr. Storrs for a year, 
and in this curacy he seems to have remained until April, 1855, 
when (Apr. 12th) an agreement was signed between him and the 
Rev. Mr. Storrs making Mr. Yewens "missionary in charge of the 
District of St. James, Kentville," his territory including portions 
of the parishes of Cornwallis and Horton, both of which were under 
the rectorship of Mr. Storrs until his resignation and final re- 
moval to England in 1876. Feb. 1, 1853, Mr. Yewens married in 
Shubenacadie, Katharine Blake, and at once took up his residence 
in Kentville, where he was the first clergyman of any denomina- 
tion permanently to reside. The first baptism recorded by him in 
the St. James Register was performed June 1, 1855, and the last in his 
Kentville ministry was that of his own daughter, Katharine Agnes, 
performed by Mr. Storrs Mar. 4, 1863. Mr. Yewens' influence at 
Kentville was strong and lasting; his sermons were vigorous and 



BIOGRAPHIES 541 

thoughtful and appealed strongly to the more intelligent men and 
women of the place. From Kentville, in 1863, he went to Digby, 
where he remained as Rector of Trinity Church until 1870. In 
the latter part of 1870 he officiated for a few months at St, Steph- 
en's Church, Boston; then in 1871 he removed to Trinity Church, 
Lewiston, Maine ^ His rectorship of the last church continued 
until 1873, when he went for three years to St. Paul's Church, Mount 
Forest, Canada. His subsequent rectorships were: St. John's, 
Elora, Canada, 1878- '79; St. John's, Franklin, Pennsylvania, Nov. 
1879— Jan. 1895. 

Mr. Yewens married, as we have said in Shubenacadie, Feb. 1, 
1853, Katharine, daughter of Thomas Blake, Esq., Retired Com- 
mander, R. N., and his wife Elizabeth (Helm), born Jan. 26, 1829, 
who bore him six children: Leigh Thomas Blake, born Dec. 1853, 
died in Aug., 1874 ; William John White, born July, 1857, died in Nov. 
1871; Mary Elizabeth; Katharine Agnes Maria; Harry Edward 
Robert, born Oct. 1866; Anne Caroline Julia. Mr. Yewens died 
in Franklin, Jan, 27, 1895; Mrs. Yewens died Jan. 17, 1897. An 
obituary in the Church Standard of February 16, 1895, says: "The 
Rev. Harry Leigh Yewens, for fifteen years Rector of St. John's 
Church, Franklin, Pa., died on Sunday, Jan. 27 (1895). Mr. Yew- 
ens was known to be one of the most scholarly priests of the dio- 
cese; while his simple, child-like faith and unaffected piety made 
him at once beloved and respected by all who knew him. His 
death is a severe blow, not only to his family and parish, but to 
the diocese and Church at large." 



FAMILY SKETCHES 



THE ALLISON FAMILY 

One of the most widely known and highly honoured King's County 
families is the Allison family. The family was founded in the 
comity not by a New England grantee, but by Joseph^ Allison (Wil-* 
liam, John,) who was bom in Drumnaha, near Limavady, County 
Londonderry, Ireland, about 1720, and with his wife Alice (Polk or 
Pollock), and children, came to Nova Scotia in 1769. He intended, 
it is said, to settle in Pennsylvania, but the vessel which brought 
him was wrecked, or partially wrecked, on Sable Island, and he and 
his family and the other passengers were brought to Halifax in- 
stead. With the Allisons, who soon settled in Horton, came the Mc- 
Heffeys, who settled in Falmouth, the Magees, who settled in Ayles- 
ford, and the MeCormicks, who settled first in Horton, then in An- 
napolis. The children of Joseph and Alice Allison were : 

i Rebecca, b. in 1751, d. in 1842, m. to Col. Jonathan Crane, 
of Horton. See the Crane Family. 

ii William, b. in 1752, d. in Pleasant Eiver, Digby county, 
in 1834, m. (1) Anna Eathbun, of Horton, (2) Mrs. 
Eliphal Lee. 

iii John, b. in 1753, d. March 1, 1821, m. in 1779, Nancy, 
dau. of John and Elizabeth (Longfellow) Whidden. 

iv Joseph, M. P. P., b, perhaps about 1755, m. in Horton, 
Alice, dau. of Israel Harding and sister of Rev. 
Harris Harding. 

V James, b. in 1765, m. Margaret Hutchinson, and lived in 
Cornwallis. 

vi Nancy, b. in 1768, m. Sept. 22, 1785 to Major Samuel Leon- 
ard, a native of New Jersey, a Loyalist, Captain of 
N. J. Volunteers, who, in 1807-8 was "Major of the 
militia in N. S., which garrisoned the forts at Hali- 
fax when the regulars were withdrawn to the aid 
of Wellington in the Peninsula. ' ' The Leonards left 
no children, but the name "Samuel Leonard" was 
long perpetuated in N. S. families allied to the 
Allisons. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 543 

William^ Allison, (Joseph^) m. (1) Dee. 12, 1782, Anna, dau. 
of Amos 2d and Humility (Randall) Rathbun, b. Jan. 1, 1764, d. 
July 7, 1792; (2) Mrs. Eliphal Lee. His life was spent chiefly in 
Horton, but he d. in Pleasant River, Digby county, in 1834. 
Children : 

i Elizabeth, m. to Rev. William Bennett, Wesleyan, and 
had a large family. Mrs. Bennett d. in Newport, 
Hants county, Rev. Mr. Bennett d. in Halifax. 

ii "William, d. young. 

iii Amos, d. young. 

iv Nancy, m. to James Noble Shannon, a merchant of Hali- 
fax, and had children: Hon. Samuel Leonard Shan- 
non, Q. C, D. C. L., M. L. a, b. in 1816; Elizabeth 
Shannon, d. young; Mary Shannon; Sophia Shannon, 
d. unm. ; Hon. Samuel Leonard Shannon, m. Anna, b. 
in 1835, dau. of Benjamin Smith and Eliza (Wil- 
loughby) Fellows of Annapolis county. 

John Allison2 (Joseph^), b. in 1753, m. Nov. 4, 1779, Nancy, 
dau. of John and Elizabeth (Longfellow) Whidden. From 1769 to 
1804 he lived in Horton, but in the latter year removed to Newport, 
Hants county, where he d. March 1, 1821. Children : 

i Sarah, b. in 1780, m. Charles Rathbun, and d. in 1837. 

ii John, b. in 1782, m, Hannah Smith. 

iii Joseph, b. in 1785, m. his cousin, Mrs. Anna (Preseott) 
O'Brien. 

iv Elizabeth, b. in 1787, m. to John Elder, of Falmouth. 

V Ann, b. in 1790, m. to Hon. Hugh Bell, M. L. C, of Hali- 
fax, and d. in 1866. She was the mother of Joseph 
Bell, Esq., High Sheriff of Halifax for many years. 

vi William, b. in 1792, m. (1) Martha Irish, of Falmouth, 
(2) Lucy Rathbun, of Horton, and d. March 1, 1851. 

vii James, b. Dec. 1, 1795, m. July, 1821, Margaret, dau. of 

Mathew and (Jenkins) Elder, whose father 

was from County Donegal, Ireland. 

viii Mary Jane, b. Oct. 13, 1798, m. July 17, 1819, Winthrop, 
son of John and Margaret (Barnard) Sargent, of 
Salem, Mass., and Barrington, N. S. 

ix David, b. in 1804, d. July 5, 1857, m. Mary Ann, dau. of 
Rufus and Ann (Preseott) Fairbanks, of Halifax, b. 
March 23, 1800, d. in April, 1896. He was of the 
firm of Fairbanks and Allison. 

X Fanny, b. to Dr. S. Wells, R. N., and d. in Bermuda. 



544 KING'S COUNTY 

xi Harriet F. 

xii Joseph, d. young. 

Joseph^ Allison, Jr., M. P. P., (Joseph^), b. in Ireland, perhaps 
about 1755, m. in Horton, probably in 1788, Alice, dau. of 
Israel Harding, one of the Horton grantees from Conn., not of the 
Hardings of Cape Cod, Mass. He represented the town of Horton 
in the legislature from 1799 to 1806. Children : 

1 Samuel Leonard, b. July 31, 1789, m. Sophia Barss. 

ii Joseph, Jr., m. Nov. 12, 1812, Lydia, dau, of John and 
Susanna (Hatch) DeWolf, and d. Jan. 5, 1816, leav- 
ing two daus. : Amelia, b. Sept. 5, 1813, m. to Thomas 
Leonard DeWolf, and lived at ''Mt. Amelia," in 
Dartmouth, where she d. March 18, 1877; Nancy 
Eebecca, b. Sept. 20, 1815, m. to Abraham Seaman. 

iii Kebecca, b. Nov. 1, 1792, d. 1833, m. Nov. 20, 1824, to 
Caleb Handley Rand, son of Mayhew and Elizabeth 
(Newcomb) Rand, b. in Cornwallis, Aug. 27, 1790, d. 
in Kentville, Sept. 14, 1875, a prominent merchant of 
Kentville for many years, and a member of St. 
John's parish, Cornwallis, in the churchyard of 
which he and his wife are buried. The children of 
Caleb and Rebecca (Allison) Rand were: Elizabeth, 
b. Sept. 15, bap, Dec. 4, 1825, m. June 30, 1854, to 
her first cousin, Charles, eldest son of Jonathan 
Crane and Jane (Boggs) Allison, of Halifax, b. Nov. 
14, 1825, d. Oct., 1863. She d. in Halifax, S. P., July 
27, 1858. A tablet to her memory rests on the south 
wall of St. James ' church, Kentville. Mary Jane, bap. 
Aug. 28, 1827, d. young. William Henry, b. May 3, 1829 
bap. June 6, 1830, d. unm. Edward Allison, b. June 
24, 1831, d. young. Ellen Rebecca, b. Aug. 14, 1833, 
bap. July or Aug. 31, 1834, m. to Mather Byles Al- 
mon, Jr., of Halifax, and had children : Ravenel, 
Mather, Frank, John, Percy, Eleanor, Muriel, Louis. 

iv Israel, m. Abigail Dickson, and became High Sheriff of 
Colchester county. He had 3 daus. : Kate, Jane, 
Anna. 

V Sarah Alice, m. Jan. 4, 1814, to Oliver, son of Mason and 
Lydia (Huntington) Cogswell, b. June 16, 1792, and 
had children: Mary, b. Feb. 14, 1815, m. (1) to 
Joseph F. Allison, (2) to Hon. Amos E. Botsford; 
Rebecca, b. March 6, 1817, m. to Thomas B. Camp- 
bell; Edward, b. Oct. 29, 1818, d. young; Nancy, b. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 545 

Nov. 7, 1819, m, to James B. Fitch ; Maria, b. Nov. 15, 
1821, m. to William C. Campbell; Robert, b. Dec. 23, 
1823, m. Mary L. Graham; Edward, b. Dec. 9, 1825, 
m. (1) Ruth Crane, (2) Sarah Dixon; Sarah, b. Nov. 
4, 1827, m. to Blair Botsford, and had seven children. 

vi Jonathan Crane, b. April 3, 1798, a leading merchant in 
Halifax, partner in the mercantile house of "Fair- 
banks and Allison." He m. Oct. 9, 1824, Jane, dau. 
of Charles and Marj^ (Fraser) Boggs, of Halifax, 
and d. Feb., 1872. Mrs. Allison d. June, 1858. They 
had children: Charles, b. Nov. 14, 1825; Alice Mary, 
b. June 14, 1827, m. Aug. 23, 1854, to William Hare, 
of Halifax ; Louisa, b. Aug. 13, 1829, d. young ; Har- 
riet, b. Dec. 25, 1831, d. young; Jane, b. April, 1834, 
d. young; Augustus, b. April 19, 1837, m. April 28, 
1868, CeviUa Hill; Alfred Louis, b. Feb. 27, 1844, d. 
young. 

vii William Henry, m. Eleanor, dau. of Robert and Eleanor 
McHeffey of Windsor, and had but one child, Catha- 
rine, b. July 14, 1826, m. April 22, 1846, to Charles 
Jane Tobin, son of Hon. Michael Tobin, Sr., of Hali- 
fax, and d. June 19, 1880. See the Tobin Family. 

viii Edward, b. in Nov., 1803, m. Catharine Henry, and lived 
in Halifax, and St. John, N. B. He d. at Halifax 
Mar. 7, 1876. They had 12 children: Lucius Carey, 
M. D.; Frank Octavius; and 10 others. 

ix Mary, m. to Philip Augustus Knaut, of Liverpool, N. S., 
and had a dau., Eva, m. to Patch. 

Jaines2 Allison, J. P., (Joseph^), b. in 1765, d. in 1849 He m. 
in Cornwallis, where he was a farmer, fruit grower, and merchant, 
Margaret Hutchinson, and had children: James Thomas, b. Oct. 3, 
1793, m. Ann McCalla ; Charles Frederick, b. Jan. 25, 1795, m. Mil- 
cah Trueman; John Hutchinson, b. Oct. 18, 1796, m. Eliza Beggs; 
Henry Burbridge, b. Sept. 30, 1801, m. Sarah Abrams ; William Ed- 
ward, b. July 23, 1806, m. Eliza McKenzie, or Ann Wilkinson; 
Joseph Francis, b. July 23, 1806, m. Mary, dau. of Oliver and Sarah 
Alice (Allison, dau. of Joseph and Alice Harding Allison) ; Mar- 
garet Ann, b. Aug. 29, 1808, m. to Rev. John Moore Campbell, 
Rector of St. John's, Cornwallis ; George Augustus, b. Apr. 27, 1811, 
m. (1) in 1842, Martha Margaret, dau. of Hon. Charles Ramage and 
Maria (Hammell) Prescott, (2) Mrs. Rigby, of Sydney, C. B. He 



546 KING'S COUNTY 

lived in Cornwallis and Halifax. At the latter place he d. June 8, 
1893. It is impossible even to indicate here the many distinguished 
families and persons that have descended from the founder of the 
Horton Allison family. Not a few of them, however, are mentioned 
in other parts of this work. Among the prominent members are : 
Charles Frederick Allison, the founder of Mt. Allison University, 
at Sackville, N. B. ; the Rev. John Allison, a clergyman of note; 
Professor David Allison, LL.D., for many years President of the 
Mt. Allison University, previously Superintendent of Education for 
Nova Scotia; and Walter Allison, merchant of Halifax, successor to 
the business of the well-known firm of John P. Mott & Co. In this 
county, among other notable families having the Allison blood, as 
we have indicated have been the families of Caleb Handley Rand, 
and Charles J. Tobin. An Allison Genealogy was published in Bos- 
ton, in 1893. 

THE ANGUS FAMILY 

Of the beginning of this family in Nova Scotia we have not much 
information. 

Dennis^ Angus, probably a Scotchman, m. Olive, b. Oct. 7, 1771, 
dau. of David Sherman and Sarah (Fox) Denison, of Horton 
(formerly of Montville, Conn.). When he died we do not know, but 
after his death Mrs. Angus lived, a widow, in Kentville, where she 
died. The Anguses had children: James; Elida; Lavinia, the first 
wife of Stephen Harrington Moore, Q. C. ; William. 

John R.i Angus, brother of Dennis, who is said to have been at 
one time High Sheriff of Halifax county, m. Rachel, dau. of Asa 
and Prudence (Denison) Davison, b. March 12, 1784, who after Mr. 
Angus' death was m. to Asa Chesley (Benjamin), of Annapolis 
county, to whom she bore children. John R., and Rachel (Davison) 
Angus had children : Asa Samuel and Mary Jane. Asa Samuel 
Angus, m. (1) Sept, 18, 1834, Maria, dau. of Samuel, Sr., and Mary 
(Gallup) Denison, b. April 21, 1803, by whom he had no children; 
(2), Oct. 25, 1848, Eliza, dau. of James and Lavinia (Denison) Deni- 
son, b. Dec. 6, 1806 (elder sister of Julia Lavinia, first wife of Benja- 



FAMILY SKETCHES 547 

min Calkin, of Kentville). By his second marriage Asa Samuel 
Angus had children : Samuel Denison, b. Feb. 15, 1836 ; Edward S., 
b. Dec. 5, 1837; John Storrs, b. Dec. 9, 1840; Lavinia Moore, b. 
April 15, 1843, d. Aug. 3, 1849. Mary Jane (John R. and Rachel 
(Davison) Angus) was m. Nov. 21, 1832, to Wm. Antil Denison. 

Richard Angus, b. in 1782 or '83, m. about 1807, Lavinia, dau. 
of John and Eleanor (Hackett) Coldwell, b. Feb. 14, 1787, and had 
children: Mary, m, to John Kennie or Kinnie (son of Benjamin), b. 
Aug. 14, 1807; Sarah, m. to Charles Woodman; Lavinia, m. to 

Clark ; Elisha, m. Margaret Robinson ; Burton, m. Mary Fol- 

lett; Joseph, m, Hannah Anderson; Richard, Jr., m. Margaret Ful- 
ler, A Margaret, dau. of a John Angus, was m. to Thomas, son of 
Thomas Cochran DeWolf (Daniel, Jehiel). 



THE AVERY FAMILY 

The chief Avery family of Horton was founded by Capt. 
Samuel^ Avery, 4th son of Rev. Ephraim and Deborah (Loth- 
rop) Avery, b, in Brooklyn, Conn., Nov. 7, 1742, descended from 
William Avery, M. D., of Barkham, Berkshire, England, who settled 
in Dedham, Mass., in 1650, and dying ia Boston in 1686, was buried 
in King's Chapel burying ground. Capt. Samuel's father. Rev. 
Ephraim (B. A., Harvard, 1731), was the first minister of Brooklyn, 
Conn., and was ordained there Sept. 24, 1735. He d. Oct. 20, 1754, 
and his widow, Deborah, was m. (2) Nov. 21, 1755, to John Gardiner, 
5th Proprietor of Gardiner's Island. She was m. (3), June 3, 1767, 
to Col. Israel Putnam, of Revolutionary fame. She d. at Fishkill- 
on-Hudson, N. Y., Oct. 16, 1777, and was buried in Col. Beverly 
Robinson's family vault. 

Capt. Samuel Avery, who had lived in Conn., and on Gardiner's 
Island, in early life, came to Halifax, N. S., and was a merchant 
there. He m. in Halifax, Sept. 27, 1784, Mrs. Mary Roach (Fillis), 
widow of John Ackincloss, b. March 27, 1760, whose father, John 
Fillis, M. P. P., formerly of Boston, was an early settler in Halifax, 
and later owned property in Horton. Mr. Albert H. Buckley, of 



548 KING'S COUNTY 

Halifax, a descendant of the Averys, says : * ' The property at Grand 
Pre on which Capt. Samuel Avery lived and which contains the 
old Willows, old well, and the site of the Acadian church, was 
known as the Murdoch farm, and appears in the inventory of John 
Fillis' estate, so it probably came to Capt. Avery with his wife, and 
was inherited from John Fillis." Capt. Avery's wife, Mary, as 
Miss Fillis, was educated at a boarding school in New York. She 
d. in Horton, Aug. 25, 1848, aged 88. Capt. Avery died there, 
Jan. 30, 1836. An invitation to act as pall-bearer at Capt. Samuel's 
funeral has been preserved. It reads: "The relatives and friends 
of the late Samuel Avery request the attendance of Mr. James 
Hamilton, Esq., as pall-holder on Wednesday next at one o'clock 
precisely, Feb. 1, 1836." Children: 

i Thomas, b. Aug. 19, 1785, drowned at Halifax, aged 25. 

ii Mary Roach, b. July 26, 1786, m. Nov. 21, 1816, William 
White of Amherst, N. S., a widower, with 5 children. 
She bore her husband 5 children, the youngest of 
whom, Edward Piers White, b. Jan. 12, 1826, m. July 
5, 1853, Elizabeth Hall, and lived at Grand Pre. 

iii Elizabeth, b. Sept. 6, 1787, m. Mar. 13, 1808, to Abiel 
Lovejoy Brown. See Brown Family. 

iv Samuel, b. Oct. 17, 1788, m. Mar. 7, 1824, Jane M. Mc- 
Alpine, b. in 1800, d. June 23, 1866. He d. May 31, 
1875. They had children: Mary Fillis, b. Dec. 29, 
1824, m. Jan. 30, 1862, to J. B. Bowser, and had a 
son Samuel Avery Bowser, b. July 21, 1866; Sarah 
Millet, m. to Capt. Wm. A. Curry; Jane, d. young; 
Catharine Susanna, d. unm. ; Rev. Samuel, b. Mar. 
18, 1832, m. in 1858, Anna DeWolf, dau. of Hon. 
John Campbell, and d. Oct. 13, 1861 ; John, d. young ; 
Susan Ingles (d. young), and Louisa Crane, twins; 
James Fillis, b. Feb. 28, 1841, m. Nov. 6, 1884, Lou- 
isa Falkner ; Twins, d. soon ; a child, d. unnamed. 

V Sarah Best, b. June 28, 1791, m. (1) to William Millet, 
(2) to William DeWolf, of Wolfville. She d. in 
Aug., 1840, S. P. 

vi Charlotte Louisa, b. July 6, 1792, m. Oct. 17, 1815, to 
James Noble Crane. See the Crane Family. 

vii James Fillis, M. D., b. May 22, 1794, d. unm., in Halifax, 
Nov. 28, 1887. 

vii George, b. Apr. 28, 1796, d. 3 days after. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 549 

ix IMatilda Susanna, b. April 4, 1798, m, as his 1st wife, in 

1888. to Hugh Logan Dickie, of Cornwallis. 
X Harriet Caroline, b. Sept. 9, 1801, d. unm. July 2, 1840. 

Of an entirely different Avery family, the Averys of Groton, 
Conn., there seem to have been at least two representatives in Hor- 
ton at an early date. These were, Robert and John Avery, 
the former being a grantee. Robert Avery, eldest son of Deacon 
Jonathan (Samuel, Capt. James, of Groton, Conn.), in 1719 or 1720, 

m. in 1741, Anna , and had children: Robert, Jr., b. Nov. 25, 

1742; John, b. Jan. 29, 1745; Anna, b. June 25, 1747; Josiah, b. 
Aug. 15, 1749 ; Susannah, b. Oct. 15, 1751 ; Sarah, b. Oct. 25, 1754 ; 
Ruth, b. Mar. 6, 1756 ; Ezekiel, b. in 1759. The printed record of 
this family virtually ends here, except that it gives the marriage 
of Ezekiel at New London, ''some time before 1790," to Lucinda 
Rogers (birth and parentage not given), and the names, David, 
George, Lucinda, Susannah, Nancy, and Lydia, of his children. In 
1741 we find Robert J. Avery in Lebanon, Conn., and as both Robert 
and John Avery were in Horton at an early day, Robert being a 
grantee, we assume that the Horton Robert and John were the 
Robert and his son, John, mentioned above. 

In Horton, Sept. 27, 1766, Ann Avery, undoubtedly the dau. 
Anna of Robert, the grantee, was married to George Haliburton. 
See Supplementary Notes. 



THE BAKER FAMILY 

The immediate origin of this Aylesford family is given in the Cal- 
nek-Savary History of Annapolis. Calvin Baker, son of John and 
Persis (Wheeler) Baker of Wilmot, m. Mar. 2, 1820, Charlotte 
Tupper. Children : 

i William Archer, b. Dec. 21, 1820. 

ii Helen, b. May 6, 1823. 

iii Ansell, b. July 28, 1826. 

iv Mary, b. July 16, 1828. 

V Samuel, b. Apr. 27, 1830. 

vi Sarah, b. June 3, 1832. 

vii Reuben, b. Dee. 6, 1835. 



550 KING'S COUNTY 

Henry2 Baker (Johni and Persis) m. Nov. 13, 1828, Mrs. Eunice 
(Tupper) Bowlby, dau. of Thomas Tupper, and widow of Jordan 
Bowlby, to whom she was m. (1) in 1821. Children : 

i Jerusha, b. Aug. 13, 1829. 

ii Mary Ann, b. June 5, 1831. 

iii Henry Lambert, b. Apr. 9, 1833. 

iv Arthur Wellesley, b. May 4, 1835. 

V James Hanley, b. June 22, 1837. 



THE BANKS FAMILY 

Moses Banks, son of Moses and (Saunders) Banks of Wil- 

mot, Annapolis county, b. about 1774-5, m. Olive, dau. of Deacon 
Joseph and Eleanor (Blood) Morton, and lived in Aylesford. 
Abram, d. at 20; Joseph; Edmund, m. his cousin, Eunice Morton; 
John, m. Elizabeth, dau. of Elijah Beals; William, m. Harriet, dau. 
of James Patterson; Maria, m. George Dunkean; Emily, m. James 
Dunkean; George, m. (1) Sarah Taylor, (2) Sylvia Marshall. (This 
record is taken wholly from the "Chute Genealogies.") 

From the Aylesford Town Book, chiefly, we learn that Richard 
Banks, b. iu 1773, brother of Moses, above, m. May 20, 1803, "Ann 
Davidson Patterson, alias Banks," and had children: William, b. 
Aug. 11, 1804, m. Ruth Collins; Elizabeth, b. Aug. 25, 1806, d. 
Mar. 28, 1823; Jane, b. Apr. 30, 1808, m., Feb. 17, 1825, to Peter 
Stocker Martin, an Englishman; John, b. Nov. 6, 1810, m. Mary 
Martin; Alexander, b. June 18, 1812, m. (1) Abigail Collins, (2) 
Helen A. Morse ; Mary, b. June 17, 1814 ; Ann, b. Mar. 22, 1818 ; La- 
vinia, b. Oct. 11, 1821. The "Chute Genealogies" gives a list of 
the families of two other Banks brothers, of this same family, who, 
the book says, also lived in Aylesford. These brothers were, Tim- 
othy, who m. Margaret, dau. of Joseph Barss; and Eliphalet, who 
m. Hannah, dau. of Timothy Saunders. Chute Genealogies, p. xvii. 



THE BARNABY FAMILY 

No family in the country has been more widely known than the 



FAMILY SKETCHES 551 

Barnaby family. Timothy^ Bamaby, a grantee in Cornwallis, from 

Lebanon, Conn, (probably a son of Timothy, b. in Plymouth, Mass., 

in 1706, and his wife Martha) m, in Cornwallis, Nov. 4, 

1762, Handley Chipman, J. P., performing the marriage ceremony 

"according to the rites of the Church of England," Elizabeth, dau. 

of John and Jean Beckwith. Children : 

i Thomas, b. Oct. 26, 1763, d. S. P. 

ii Ambrose, b. Oct. 21, 1765, m. Catherine Beckwith. 

iii Sarah, b. Jan. 14, 1768. 

iv Mary, b. Apr. 2, 1770. 

V John, b. Mar. 9, 1772, m. Malvina Rebecca Chipman. 
vi Elizabeth, b. Feb. 23, 1775. 

vii Timothy, b. Jan. 24, 177, m. Jane Chipman. 

viii Hannah, b. Dec. 19, 1778. 

ix Hopestead, b. Aug. 23, 1781. 

X Worden, b. Oct. 17, 1784, m. (1) Lydia Eaton, (2) 

Charlotte Kinsman, 
xi Charles, b. Oct. 7, 1786, m. Fuller. 

Ambrose2 Barnaby (Timothyi) b. Oct. 21, 1765, m. Mar. 6, 1800, 
Catherine, dau. of John and Catharine Beckwith, and d. aged 87. 
Dr. Brechin writes of him, that he was a notable man in the county. 
He was a colonel in the militia, and gifted with a magnificent 
physique, "in that capacity making a most stately appearance. On 
horseback he was the cynosure of all eyes." He lived and died on 
the farm situated in Canard, adjoining the farm of the late John 
Terry Newcomb. Children: 

i Elizabeth, b. Mar. 13, 1801, m. Mar. 3, 1821, to Oliver 
Saunders, and lived in Clarence, Annapolis county. 

ii Charles Grandison, b. May 24, 1803, d, unm. 

iii John Obed, b. Jan. 14, 1805 or '06, m. Apr. 25, 1831, Har- 
riet Cogswell. 

iv Lydia, b. Oct. 23, 1810, m. to Russell Chesley. 

V Catherine, b. June 26, 1815. m. to Stephen Daniels. 

John2 Barnaby, (Timothyi), b. March 9, 1772, m. April 28, 1795, 
Rebecca, dau. of William Allen and Anne Chipman, b. April 28, 
1795, d. Sept. 18, 1808. Children : 

i William, b. April 25, 1796, m. June 2, 1818, Charlotte, 
dau. of Joseph and Elizabeth Sibley. 



55^ KING'S COUNTY 

ii Jean, b. April 4, 1798, m. Oct. 23, 1815, William Hunt 

(elsewhere spoken of in this book). 
iii John, b. May 19, 1801. 
iv Handley, b. April 15, 1803. 

V George, b. M'ay 12, 1805. 

vi James Russell, b. Dec. 13, 1807. 

Timothy2, Jr., Barnaby (Timothyi), b. Jan. 24, 1777, m. Sept. 8, 
1802, Jane, dau. of John and Eunice Chipman, b. March 19, 1785. 
He was a major in the militia, and Dr. Brechin writes: "If I have 
not been misinformed he was buried with military honors." 
Children : 

i Jared Ingersoll, b. Jan. 2, 1806. 

ii Caroline Eliza, b. Sept. 18, 1810, m. Oct. 3, 1883, to 

Winckworth Allen Cogswell, 

iii Allen C, b. Sept. 16, 1812. 

iv Thomas Edward, b. Jan. 23, 1814. 

V William Henry, b. Nov. 17, 1815. 
vi Maria, m. to Edward Ross. 

yii Olivia, m. to William J. Sawyer, son of Sheriff J. J. and 
Eliza (Tobin) Sawyer of Halifax, and had children, 
one of whom, Mary J., became the 2d wife of Went- 
worth Eaton Barnaby (George Eaton, Worden, 
Timothy). 

Worden2 Barnaby, (Timothy^), b. Oct. 17, 1784, m. (1) Jan. 1, 

1806, Lydia, dau. of Elisha and Irene (Bliss) Eaton, who d. Sept. 

11, 1815. He m. (2) April 4, or May 30, 1816, Charlotte, dau. of 

Joseph and Sarah Kinsman. Children : 

i Elisha, b. Jan. 1, 1807, m. Amelia Lounsbury. 
ii Eliza Irene, b. Oct. 8, 1808, m. to Thomas Rand, 
iii Timothy, b. June 14, 1811, m. Eliza Masters, 
iv Hopestead, b. July 18, 1813, m. to Israel Elliott, of An- 
napolis county. 

V George Eaton, b. Aug. 23, 1815. 

vi Julia Ann, b. Dec. 22, 1818, m. to her cousin, Allen 

Barnaby. 
vii Sarah, m. to Lawson Ross. 

John Obed^, (Ambrose2, Timothyi), b. Jan. 14, 1806, m. April 25, 

1831, Harriet, dau. of John Cogswell, b. March 25, 1803. Children : 

i John Morton, M. D., b. March 8, 1832, m. Oct. 1, 1864, 
Annie M., dau. of George Eaton Barnaby. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 553 

ii Lydia E., b. March 28, 1835, m. Oct. 1, 1856, to Samuel 

Reid. 
iii Henry Cogswell, b. Oct. 13, 1839, m. July 15, 1868, Sophia 

Keens, 
iv Annie R., b. Aug. 12, 1842, m. March 7, 1872, to Thaddeus 

Bowles. 

V Gideon, M. D., b. Aug. 18, 1845, m. Annie L, Kenny. 

George Eaton^ Barnaby, (Worden^, Timothy^), b. Aug. 23, 1815, 
m. Mary E, Dickie. See Personal Sketches. 

Stephen^ Barnaby, (Timothy and Martha), b. in Provincetown, 

Mass., Oct. 13, 1728, m, in Lebanon, Conn,, Dec. 5, 1754, Desiah 

Chappell. Children : 

i Desiah, b. Oct. 5, d. Dec. 5, 1755. 

ii Lydia, m. to Joseph Rockwell. 

iii James, b. March 8, 1764, m. in Coventry, Conn,, Sarah 

Chappell. 

iv Abigail, b. April 24, 1766. 

V Joseph, b. Jan. 29, 1769, m. Frances Sweet, 
vi Martha, b. June 13, 1771. 

vii Catherine, b. Aug. 13, 1773. 
viii Benjamin, b. Jan, 19, 1780. 

James^ Barnaby (Stephen^), b, March 8, 1764, in Coventry, 

Conn., Jan 19, 1785, Sarah Chappell, Children: 

i Diah, b. Nov. 23, 1786. 

ii Abigail, b, March 25, 1789, m, March 7, 1806, to Timothy 
Davidson, 

Joseph^ Barnaby (Stepheni), b. Jan. 29, 1769, m. May 1, 1794 
Frances, dau. of John and Mary Sweet. Children. 

i Catherine, b. Dec. 1, 1794, m. Oct. 15, 1816, to Stephen 

Dunham, and had children: John, b. Feb. 8, 1818; 
William, b. Apr. 13, 1820, and perhaps others, 

ii Stephen, b. Sept. 9, 1797. 

iii Lydia, b. Feb. 23, 1801, 

iv Martha, b, Dec. 12, 1803. 

v Jemima, b. Feb. 22, 1807. 

vi Joseph, Jr., b. Nov. 2, 1809, 



THE BAKSS FAMILY 

The Barss family of King's County was transplanted to the county 



554 KING'S COUNTY 

from Liverpool, N. S., where it had been founded by Joseph Barss 
or Bearse, Jr., son of Joseph and Lydia (Deane) Barss, of Barnstable, 
Mass., who m. a Crowell. The mother of Joseph Barss, Jr., after 
her first husband's death, was m. in 1756, to Thomas Annis. Joseph 
Barss, Jr., was a shipowner and successful shipping merchant in 
Liverpool, and a representative to the Legislature from Liverpool. 
He d. in Aug., 1826, leaving three sons and two daughters. Two 
sons, More's History of Queen's county tells us, had d. before their 
father. One of his sons was Capt. Joseph, 3cl, who m. Olivia De- 
Wolf, dau. of Judge Elisha and Margaret (Ratchford) DeWolf, b. 
Sept. 23, 1783, and settled in Kentville. The children of Capt. 
Joseph and Olivia (DeWolf) Barss were: Elisha; Eliza Ann; Amelia, 

m. to Harris, of Aylesf ord ; James and Joseph, twins ; John 

William, who m. in Horton, Lydia Kirtland Fitch, dau. of Simon 
and Sophia Henrietta (DeWolf) Fitch, b. June 16, 1814; Thomas; 

Mary, m. (1) to Mills, (2) to Freeman, of Liverpool; 

Simon Fitch. In other places in this book references will be found 
to John William Barss, Esq., of Wolfville, and his family, who are 
still importantly represented in Wolfville. 



THE BAXTER FAMILY 

The Baxter family in Cornwallis was founded by William Bax- 
ter, M. D., M. P. P., son of Capt. Simon and Prudence (perhaps 
Fox) Baxter, Loyalists, who came from Alstead, N. H., to Norton, 
N. B., and settled there. Capt. Simon's children were: Elijah; 
Benjamin; Dr. William; Joseph; Dorothy; Abigail; Simon; Abram. 

Williami Baxter, M. D., b. in 1760, m. (1) Mar. 13, 1783, Ruth, 

dau. of Amos and Mary (Harrington) Sheffield, b. in Cornwallis, 

Apr. 22, 1762, (2) Julia Swigo. He d. Nov. 22, 1832. Children by, 

first marriage : 

i Benjamin, b. Dec. 6, 1783, d. June 1, 1784. 

ii Sarah, b. Mar. 4. 1785, m. Feb. 24, 1807, to Nathan 

Woodworth, and had 8 children, 
iii Benjamin Belcher, b. Apr. 17, 1787. 
iv John B. b. May 2, 1789, at Moncton, N. B., m. in 1809, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 555 

Sarah, dau. of Matthew and Mary Fisher, b. June 29, 
1793. He lived at Baxter's Harbour, to which place 
he gave his name. He d. there in Nov., 1872. 



THE BEACH FAMILY 

Isaac! Beach, son of William and Martha Beach, of a well-known 

Connecticut family, must have married (1) Elizabeth Berry, for 

Isaac and Elizabeth (Berry) Beach had in Cornwallis a daughter 

Elizabeth, b. June 3, 1779. Isaac (son of William and Martha) m. 

(2) in Cornwallis, May 31, 1782, Eunice, dau. of Nathaniel and 

Eunice (Fish) Bliss, b. June 15, 1758. Children: 

i Sarah, b. Sept. 16, 1782. 

ii Elijah, b. May 1, 1785. 

iii Elisha, b. May 23, 1787, m. Sarah Loomer. 

iv Eunice, b. Apr. 20, 1789. 

V Ruth, m. Jan. 16, 1822, to William Greenwood Burbidge. 

Elisha^ (Isaac^) m. Sarah Loomer. Children: 

i Isaac, Jr., b. Feb. 17, 1815, m. Mrs. Martha Ann (New- 
comb) Mayhew, b, Jan. 18, 1818. He probably had 
a dau., Ruth Ann, b. Feb. 16, 1845, m. Nov. 5, 1868, 
to Frederick W., son of John White Eaton. 

ii Elisha, Jr., b. 20, 1816. 

iii Mary Ellen, b. July 12, 1819. 



BECKWITH FAMILIES 

Among the Connecticut planters in King's County were Samuel 
and John Beckwith, of Norwich, Conn., and Benjamin, Andrew, and 
Nicholas, of Lyme. These were all descendants of Matthew Beck- 
with, born in England, in 1610, whose wife Elizabeth, after his 
death was m. to Samuel Buckland. The eldest son of Matthew 
and Elizabeth was Matthew, 2nd, and the latter by his wife, 
Sarah, had among other children, Samuel, and John, who came to 
Nova Scotia. The Beckwith family of New England early inter- 
married with the Marvin and other important families and their 
Genealogy is an interesting one. 

Capt. SamueP Beckwith (James and Sarah), b. at Lyme, Conn., 



556 KING'S COUNTY 

May 24, 1709, in 1732 went to Norwich, Conn., with his father, 
who bought there the John Hazen farm of 200 acres, of which he 
gave his son half. Feb. 1, 1738-9, Capt. Samuel m. his maternal 
cousin, Miriam, youngest child of Reynold and Martha (Water- 
man) Marvin, b. about 1720. In 1746 he received from his father, 
then "of Southington," all his father's rights at Norwich. May 
11, 1761, Capt. Samuel sold his land at Norwich to Jabez Hunting- 
ton and Benjamin Lord, Jr., and removed to Cornwallis, where he 
became a grantee. Children born at Norwich, Conn, : 

i Mary, b. Aug. 17, 1740, m. July 29, 1762, to Caleb, son of 
Samuel and Mary Gillett (of Colchester, Conn.), and 
had several children, 
ii Samuel, Jr., b. July 30, 1743, m. (1) in 1767, Rebecca 

Chipman, (2) Sarah Rand, 
iii Elisha, b. July 27, 1745, m. Susanna Reynolds, and re- 
moved to N. B. 
iv Martha, b. Oct. 25, 1747, m. Sept. 6, 1765, to Barnabas 
Tuthill Lord, of Deer Island (prob. N. B.), and had 
children b. in Cornwallis. 

V Asa, b. Apr. 11, 1750, m. Mary Morton. 

vi David, b. June 22, 1752, m. Catherine Newcomb. 
vii Nehemiah, b. Feb. 29, 1756, m. in 1790, Julie, dau. of Jean 
Baptiste Le Brun, of Montreal, and d. in 1815. 

SamueP, Jr., Beckwith (Capt. Samueli), b. July 30, 1742, m. (1) 
in 1767, Rebecca, dau. of Handley and Jane (Allen) Chipman, (-2) 
Mar. 26, 1782, Sarah, dau. of Caleb and Mary (Mayhew) Rand, 
who after her 1st husband's death was m., Dec. 17, 1807, to Tim- 
othy Eaton. Children by first marriage: 

i Thomas Marvin, b. Oct. 21, 1768. 

ii Elizabeth, b. July 19, 1770, m. to Mayhew Rand. 

iii Eunice, b. July 4, 1772. 

iv Rebecca, b. July 29, 1774. 

V Mary, b. Oct. 8, 1776. 

Children by second marriage : 

vi Ruth, b. Apr. 15, 1783. 

vii Martha, b. Sept. 7, 1784. 

viii Samuel, b. Dec. 5, 1785. 

ix Nanna (prob. Anna), b. Apr. 23, 1787. 

X Charlotte, b. Dec. 2, 1789. 

xi Ardelia, b. May 19, 1792. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 557 

EHsha2 Beckwith (Capt. SamueU), b. July 27, 1745, m. June 22, 

1769, Susanna, dau. of Benjamin and Ruth Reynolds. Children: 

i Reynolds, b. May 2, 1770. 

ii George, b. Jan. 29, 1772. 

iii Samuel, b. Nov. 21, 1773. 

iv William, b. June 6, 1775. 

V Elisha, b. Oct. 3, 1776. 
vi Sarah, b. Aug. 8, 1779. 
vii Eunice, b. July 9, 1781. 
viii John, b. July 11, 1783. 
ix Ruth, b. June 26, 1786. 

X "William, b. July 31, 1788. 
xi Eunice, b. Sept. 20, 1791. 
xii Elizabeth, b. Mar. 1, 1793. 

Asa2 Beckwith (Capt. Samueli), b. April 11, 1750, m. Dec. 29, 

1774, Mary, dau. of Elkanah and Rebecca Morton. Children : 

i Elizabeth, b. Jan. 21, 1777. 

ii James, b. Feb. 15, 1779. 

iii Mary, b. Feb. 6, 1781, m. to Rev. William Forsyth, and 
had children: Mary, who became the 1st wife of 
Rev. George Struthers; William, M. D., d. unm. ; 
Jean, m. as his 2nd wife, to Thomas Lydiard; John, 
m. Martha Ann, dau. of Hon. John Morton; Mar- 
garet, unm.; Bezaleel, m. (1) Tupper, (2) 

Oakes; Elizabeth, d. unm. 

iv Rebecca, b. Aug. 6, 1786. 

V Asa, Jr., b. Jan. 28, 1788. 
vi Asa, Jr., b. Feb. 11, 1790. 
vii Elkanah, b. Oct. 20, 1792. 
viii Samuel, b. Oct. 20, 1794. 
ix Nehemiah, b. July 12, 1798. 

David Beckwith^ (Capt. SamueP), b. June 22, 1752, m. Apr. 7, 

1774, Catherine, dau. of John Newcomb. He d. Nov. 15, 1787. 

i John, b. Dec. 25, 1774. 

ii Zerviah, b. Feb. 5, 1782. 

iii Catherine, b. Feb. 21, 1784. 

iv Tirzah, b. Mar. 14, 1787. 

Johni Beckwith (James and Sarah), b. at Lyme, Conn., Oct. 10, 

1713, m. at Norwich, Apr. 20, 1727, Jane, dau. of Dr. Thomas and 

Sarah (Butler) Worden, of Norwich, b. prob. at Stoniugton, in 

1722. He d. in Cornwallis, Apr. 18, 1810. Children: 



558 KING'S COUNTY 

i John, Jr., b. Mar. 16, 1738, also a grantee in Cornwallis, 
m. Aug. 11, 1764, Catherine, dau. of Handley and 
Jane Chipman, and d. Sept, or Dec. 15, 1816. His 
wife d. June 21, 1812. They had children: John, 
b. Dee. 27, 1765; Jean, b. Jan. 5, 1768; Handley, b. 
Mar. 6, 1770, m. Catherine Newcomb; Margaret, b. 
Apr. 16, 1772 ; Catherine, b. Oct. 11, 1774, m. to Col. 
Ambrose Barnaby; Sarah, b. Aug. 8, 1776, m. 'to 
Zaccheus Best, son of Richard Best; Prudence, b. 
Mar. 9, 1779, m. May 14, 1795, as his 1st wife, to 

Erastus Pineo; Elizabeth, b. 16, 1782, m. Jan. 

28, 1802, to James Cogswell. 

ii Hopestill, b. Oct. 22, 1740, m. Feb. 18, 1766, to Benjamin 
Beckwith (Benjamin and Patience), bap,, at Lyme, 
July 22, 1739, and had : Alline, or Allen, b. Aug. 13, 
1768; Phebe, b. June 29, 1771; George, b. Feb. 25, 
1776. 

iii Elizabeth, bap. at Southington, Conn., July 28, 1745, was 
m. in Cornwallis, to Timothy Barnaby, who, "far 
advanced in years," made his will Nov. 29, 1820, 

iv "Worden, bap. at Southington, July 9, 1749, m. in Corn- 
wallis, Martha, eldest child of John and Parthenia 
(Gray) Steadman, b. Nov. 18, 1750. 

John2, Jr., Beckwith (John^), b. at Norwich, Conn., Mar. 16, 1738, 
m. in Cornwallis, Aug. 11, 1764, Catharine, dau. of Handley and 
Jane (AUen) Chipman, b. Nov. 11, 1746, d. June 21, 1812. He d. 
Dee. 15, 1816. Children : 

i John, 3rd, b. Dec. 27, 1765. 

ii Jane, b. Jan. 5, 1768. 

iii Handley, b. Mar. 6, 1770. 

iv Margaret, b. Apr. 16, 1772. 

V Katherine, b. Oct. 11, 1774, m. to Col. Ambrose Barnaby. 

vi Sarah, b. Aug. 8, 1776, m. to Zaccheus, son of Richard 

Best, 

vii Prudence, b. Mar. 9, 1779, m. to Erastus Pineo. 

viii Elizabeth, b. 16, 1782, m. to James Cogswell. 

Handley3 Beckwith (John2, Jr., John^), b. Mar. 6, 1770, m, Dec. 
13, 1792, Catherine, dau, of Joseph Newcomb, b. Mar. 15, 1775, d. 
Mar. 15, 1863. He d. Feb. 29, 1860, Children: 

i An infant, b. and d. in 1793. 
ii John b. Oct. 7, 1794, d. young. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 559 

iii Joseph, b. June 26, 1796, m. Martha Lyons, and d, Jan. 
1, 1851. 

iv Mayhew, M. P. P., b. Oct. 14, 1798, m. (1) Eunice, dau. 
of Kayhew Rand, (2) the widow of Edward Strong. 
He was for many years one of the most important 
men in Cornwallis. He d. Apr, 7, 1871. His chil- 
dren were: John Albert, m. Rebecca Barnaby; 
Elizabeth Ellen, m. to James E. Masters, of St. John, 
N. B. ; Robert N., of Halifax ; Catherine Amelia, m. 
to Harding Randall, of Nictaux, Annapolis county; 
Isabella, b. Sept. 28, 1838, d. young; Mary Lavinia, 
m. to Valentine Landry; Adelia, m. to Mason Shef- 
field, M. D. ; Col, Edward Manning, m. (1) Laura 
Wickwire, (2) Mary Asenath Starr, and lives at 
Canning; Laleah, m. to Wentworth Sheffield; Bur- 
pee, M. D., m. Margaret Musgrave; Mayhew, d. 
young. 

Benjamin Beckwith, Jr., 4th child of Benjamin, Sr. and Patience 
(Eden) Beckwith, was bap. at Lyme, Conn., July 22, 1739. In 
1761, '68, and '79 he was a grantee in Horton, and in '83 a grantee 
in Aylesford. He was the son of a 1st cousin of Capt. Samuel^ and 
Johni, the Cornwallis grantees. He m. (1) Feb, 18, 1766, Hopestill 
or Hopested Beckwith, dau. of John and Jane (Worden) Beck- 
with, (2) July 3, 1783, Lydia Babcock, of Cornwallis. His dau. Re- 
becca was b, June 13 or 18, 1784. 

Andrew Beckwith, another son of Benjamin, Sr. and Patience, 
bap. at Lyme, June 26, 1743, m, Apr. 20, 1775, Lois, dau. of Samuel 
Copp, and settled in Horton. He had children b. in Horton : Sarah, 
Jan. 15, 1776; Samuel, b. Aug. 15, 1778; Nicholas, Jr., b. Aug. 27, 
1781. 

Nicholas, youngest son of Benjamin, Sr,, and Patience, bap. at 
Lyme, Oct. 29, 1652, went perhaps first to Horton, then to Ayles- 
ford. He m. and had a dau., Phebe, m. in 1792, to Roswell 

Pelton, and had 5 children. He or his nephew Nicholas (son of 
Andrew) m. about 1800, Mrs. Lois (Nichols) Ruggles. Aug. 30, 
1783, the heirs of Andrew Beckwith received a grant in Aylesford. 
Mrs. Lois (Nichols) Ruggles was a dau. of William and Mary 
(Richards) Nichols, and the widow of Joseph Ruggles, nephew of 



560 KING'S COUNTY 

General Timothy Euggles. She had 5 children by her 1st marriage, 
and by her 2nd, in Aylesford: Sarah Richards, b. Apr. 9, 1801; 
Andrew, b. May 4, 1804; Mary, b. Dec. 24, 1806. 



THE BELCHER FAMILY 

Benjamin! Belcher, founder of the King's County Belcher fam- 
ily, was born in Gibraltar, July 17, 1743, it is supposed of English 
parents and did not receive his grant in Cornwallis till 1797. In 
Cornwallis he was an important land-owner and farmer, a prom- 
inent merchant, a warden of St. John's Church, a representative 
to the Legislature, and the owner of several slaves. He d. May 
14, 1802. The Hon. Jonathan Belcher of Halifax, Lieut. Gov. and 
Chief Justice, was a descendant of Andrew Belcher of Boston, 
Mass., whose grandfather, Robert Belcher was of Kingswood, 
Wilts, England, and between these two families there is no known 
connection. From similarity of names there has been some sus- 
picion that Benjamin Belcher of Cornwallis was of the Gregory 
Belcher family of Braintree, Mass., but it is doubtful if this is cor- 
rect. Benjamin Belcher m. in Cornwallis, in 1763, or early in 1764, 
Sarah, dau. of Stephen and Elizabeth (Clark) Post, b. at Saybrook, 
Conn., Aug. 17, 1741, whose father died in Cornwallis, Mar. 29, 
1767. Children: 

i John, b. Sept. 6, 1764, m. Ruth Sheffield. 

ii Joseph, twin with John, d. young. 

iii William, b. Apr. 18, 1767, d. Sept. 18, 1772. 

iv Stephen, b. June 7, 1770, m. Abigail Sweet. 

V Elizabeth, b. Mar. 15, 1772, m. Jan. 1. 1795, to Amos, son 

of Amos and Mary Sheffield. 
. vi Benjamin, Jr., b. Aug. 6, 1774, m. Sarah Starr. See 

Starr Family. 

John2 Belcher (Benjamin^), b. Sept. 6, 1764, m. June 24, 1784, 
Ruth, dau. of Joseph Sheffield, ''of Rhode Island," and was 
drowned on a voyage to Antigua, leaving two children: Joseph, b. 
May 21 or 22, 1785, who was killed by being thrown from a horse 
he was racing ; Sarah, b. July 27, 1787. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 561 

Stephens Belcher (Benjamin^), b. June 7, 1770, m. Oct. 7, 1791, 
Abigail Sweet (grand-daughter of Col. Jonathan Sherman), b. in 
1774. He d. May 25, 1804; she d. June 24, 1855, "aged 81." He 
lived on the place in the 19th century owned by Henry Cogswell, 
Children : 

i Waty Sherman, b. in 1792, d. Aug. 23, 1826, probably 

unm. 
ii Sarah, m, to Robert Ainsley, of Bridgetown, Annapolis 

county, 
iii John, b. Apr. 17, 1795, m. Matilda Wells. 
Benjamin, Jr.,2 Belcher (Benjamin^), b. Aug. 6, 1774, m. Feb. 6, 
1800, Sarah, dau. of David and Susanna (Potter) Starr, b. Nov. 1, 
1778. He d. May 14, 1802, and his widow was m. (2) Apr. 17, 1805, 
to Walter Carroll Manning, of Halifax. See the Manning Family. 
She d. Aug. 15, 1812, or '14. Child : 

i Clement Horton, b. Mar. 5, 1801. 
John Belcher^ (Stephen^, Benjamin^), b. Apr. 17, 1795, m. Jan. 
25, 1816, by Eev. Robert Norris, Matilda, dau. of John, M. P. P., 
and Prudence (Eaton) Wells, b. Mar. 13. 1797. He d. Aug. 31, 
1873 ; she d. Mar. 27, 1880. Children : 

i Eunice Wells, b. Oct. 23, 1816, m. Apr. 19, 1849, as his 
2nd wife, to Guy, Jr., Eaton, b. Aug. 6, 1821, and 
had 5 children. 

ii Sarah Jane, b. Feb. 9, 1819, d. unm., Mar. 19, 1863. 

iii Prudence Sophia, b. Oct. 18, 1821, m. in 1846, to Judah 
B. Rockwell. 

iv John Sherman, b. Oct. 25, 1824, m. Maria, dau. of Thomas 
David Dickie. 

v Waty Rebecca, b. Sept. 19, 1827, m. to William, son of 
Elias Burbidge. 

vi Anna Maria, m. to James Samuel Miller, M. D. 

vii Stephen, b. Sept. 2, 1833, m. (1) Sarah, dau. of Elias Bur- 
bidge, (2) Rebecca, dau. of James Rand. He was 
High Sheriff of the county, from 1881 to 1905, and 
his tombstone in the Chipman's Corner Burying 
Ground records that he was *'an efficient and cour- 
teous officer, universally esteemed and respected." 
He d. May 4, 1905. 

viii WiUiam Henry, b. Feb. 14, 1839, m. Feb. 12, 1863, Rachel, 
'dau. of James Shaw. 

ix Mary, m. to Freeman Elliott, of Halifax. 



562 KING'S COUNTY 

Clement Horton^ Belcher (Benjamin^, Jr., Benjamin^), b. Mar. 5, 
1801, m. June 6, 1826, his 1st cousin, Mary Jane, dau. of Joseph 
and Mlary (Gore) Starr, b. Dec. 19, 1806, d. in Halifax, May 15, 
1868. He d. at Halifax, May 23, 1869. Their children were : Mary 
Sophia ; Sarah Clementine ; Joseph Starr, m. Mary E. Ritchie, of 
Halifax; Sarah Elizabeth, m. to Major Robert "William Starr; 
Georgiana; George Herbert; Florence Lucy; Clement Horton, Jr., 
Florence Lucy (Belcher) is the wife of Charles Smith, Esq., of a 
prominent Hants county family, founded there by John Smith, who 
came from Hull, Yorkshire, England, in 1774. Mr. and Mrs. Smith 
have one daughter, Kathleen, m. to Percy Parker of Kentville. 



BENEDICT FAMILY 
Jabez Benedict, a Loyalist, who settled in Aylesford, was a son 
of Jabez and Charity (Booth) Benedict, of Danbury, Cornwall, and 

Johnstown, Conn. He was born , and married, Jan. 15, 

1782, Mary Weeks, of Long Island, N. Y. They had children: 
Sarah, b. Jan. 21, 1792, m. (probably) Feb. 18, 1808, to Thomas 
Dodge ; Alexander, b. Mar. 27, 1794, m. Mar. 23, 1820, Eliza Patter- 
son ; Mary, b. May 24, 1796 ; Rachel, b. Apr. 8, 1798, m. in 1814, to 
Fredk. Foster. 

Moses Benedict, of Aylesford, m. Olive (Banks) Morton, and had 
children born in Aylesford: Edward, b. Mar. 12, 1806; John Ha- 
man, b. Mar. 7, 1808; William, b. Dec. 20, 1811; Tamzin Maria, b. 
Sept.. 5, 1812 ; Emily, b. Oct. 8, 1816 ; George, b. Aug. 8, 1821. See 
Benedict Genealogy, and the Aylesford Town Book. 

According to the Benedict Genealogy, p. 246, Jabez^ Benedict, son 
of Jabez and Charity (Booth) Benedict, of Danbury and Cornwall, 
Conn., m. Jan. 15, 1782, Mary Weeks of Long Island, and went to 
Aylesford, King's county as a Loyalist. In Nov., 1790, he had a 
grant of 300 acres of land in Aylesford. Concerning his children 
the Benedict Genealogy knows that he had a son Alexander, b. 
about 1794, and 3 daughters. From the Aylesford Town Book we 



FAMILY SKETCHES 563 

discover that he had children : Sarah, b. Jan. 21, 1792, m. probably 
to Thomas Dodge ; Alexander, b. March 27, 1794 ; Mary, b. May 24, 
1796 ; Rachel, b. April 8, 1798, m. to Frederick Foster. 

Alexander^ Benedict (Jabezi) b. March 27, 1794, m. March 23, 
1820, Eliza Patterson. Children : Alexander, Jr., b. Dec. 21, 1820 ; 
James, b. Nov. 11, 1822. 

Moses Benedict m. Olive Morton, "alias Banks," and had children 
recorded in Aylesf ord : Edward, b. March 12, 1806; John Haman, b. 
March 7, 1808 ; William, b. Dec. 20, 1811 ; Tamzin Maria, b. Sept. 5, 
1812 ; Emily, b. Oct. 8, 1816 ; George, b. Aug. 8, 1821. 

Frederick Benedict, bachelor, of Aylesford, and Mary Jane Fos- 
ter, spinster, of Granville, v^rere m. by license, by the Rev, Charles 
Tupper, July 27, 1851. She was m. (2) to Thomas Roland. 



THE BENTLEY FAMILY 

The Bentley family of King's County was founded in New Eng- 
land by William Bentley, who sailed from Gravesend, Eng., in the 
ship Arabella, May 27, 1671, and was a resident of Narragansett, 
R. L, Jan. 29, 1679. His will, proved at Kingston, R. I., in 1720, 
mentions his wife Sarah and children: William; James; Thomas; 
Benjamin; Jane. The founder of the King's County family was 
Davidi Bentley, great-grandson of the first William and 
grandson of the second William, a grantee in Cornwallis in 
1761. His wife was Ann, but we do not know her maiden name. 
Children : 

i Eunice, m. May 14, 1772 to Peter Pineo, Jr. 

ii Anna, m. Oct. 21, 1773, to Dan Pineo. 

iii Phebe, m. July 18, 1776, to William Pineo. 

iv Asael, m. in Cornwallis, May 26, 1778, Lucy, dau. of Asa 
and Sarah Clark. Children: Alice, b. Apr. 8, 1779; 
Anne, b. May 2, 1782; Charlotte, b. April 16, 1786; 
George, b. June 29, 1788; Asael, Jr.; William, b. 
July 4, 1791, m. Feb. 6, 1814, Ruth, dau. of James 
and Nancy (Manning) Eaton, b. April 14, 1794, (and 
had children: Nancy, b. Dec. 20, 1815; Charlotte, b. 



564 KING'S COUNTY 

Mar. 14, 1817 ; Lucy, b. Oct. 2, 1818 ; George, b. Sept. 
20, 1820) ; Sarah, b. Dec. 19, 1796. 

V David, Jr., b. Jan. 18, 1761, in Cornwallis, m. Oct. 26, 
1786, Margaret, dau. of Abraham and Margaret 
Webster. This family removed to Stewiacke. Chil- 
dren: Daniel Webster, b. Sept. 6, 1787; James, b. 
Jan. 10, 1790; Huldah, b. July 17, 1792; Noah, b. 
July 19, 1794; Prudence, b. July 14, 1796; David, b. 
Aug. 1, 1799; Abraham, b. Sept. 24, 1801. 

vi James, b. July 25, 1763. 

vii John, b. Oct. 6, 1764, m. Nov. 5, 1788, Miriam, dau. of 
Caleb and Mary Gillett. Children: Elizabeth, b. 
Oct. 3, 1789 ; David, b. Feb. 9, 1792 ; Caleb Gillett, b. 
Apr. 10, 1794 ; Mary, b. Apr. 17, 1796. 

viii Hannah, b. Nov. 20, 1767. 

ix Eliot, b. June 19, 1770. 

X Prudence, b. May 10, 1773, m. to Isaac Webster, M. D. 

George^ Bentley (AsaeP, David^), b. June 29, 1788, m. , 



and had probably among other children: Andrew; George, b. May 
18, 1812 ; Asael, Jr., b. Nov. 10, 1813. Of these sons, Asael, Jr., m. 
Elizabeth Caroline Gesner, b. Sept. 9, 1817, and had children: 
Maria Jane, George Gesner, Elizabeth Catharine, Abram Stronach, 
John Henry, Sophia Rebecca, William Burpee, Stephen Morine. Of 
these, Sophia Rebecca was m. Sept. 7, 1872, to James Everett Eaton, 
of Collinsville, Conn , son of Benjamin and Sophia (Ells) Eaton, of 
Cornwallis, and has children: Laurie Everton, Mabel Leta, Harold 
Arthur, "Violet Locke, Edith Sophia, Elsie Lydia, Philip Bentley. 
Others of the children of Asael Bentley intermarried with the Bor- 
den, Randall, Terry, Layton, Robins and Lockhart families. Facts 
concerning the Bentley family in Connecticut may be found in 
Wheeler's History of Stonington. 



THE BEST FAMILY 

Among the English settlers in Halifax in 1749 was Wilhami 
Best, who, in 1752, was there with a family of eleven persons. In 
1758, William Best, gentleman, was a representative in the first As- 
sembly. He was not in the second Assembly, which began its ses- 



FAMILY SKETCHES 565 

sions in 1759, but he was in the third as representing the town of 
Halifax, and in the fourth as representing the county of Halifax. 
After this he appears in the Legislature no more. March 15, 1769, 
"William Best, "master mason," was living in Cornwallis, near his 
friend, Col, John Burbridge. If he owned land there he must have 
bought it, for while among the grants we find one of 750 acres, 
April 8, 1761, to John Best, we find none whatever to William Best, 
His wife was Elizabeth, but her maiden name is unknown to us. 
William Best d. in Halifax, Nov. 17, 1782, aged 75 ; his wife, Eliza- 
beth, was buried there Nov, 4, 1786, Children : 

i John, " gentleman, " was appointed May 31, 1760, 2d Lieut, 
in Capt. Scott's company of militia, and m. May 19, 
1771, in Cornwallis, Jean, dau. of Abel and Jean 
Burbidge. He at first lived in Halifax, for he had 
two sons born there, and his wife, Jenny Best died 
there, June 23, 1773, aged 22, and was buried in St. 
Paul's burying ground. In April, 1773, John Best, of 
Halifax, "gentleman," bought land in Cornwallis, 
from Samuel Starr, Jan. 29, 1774, from Joshua Ells, 
and in 1774 from Judah Wells, Moses Dewey, and 
Abel Burbidge. Later he became a vestryman in St. 
John 's parish, Cornwallis. He died in Halifax, and was 
buried there, Aug. 7, 1778. By his wife, Jean, he 
had sons: William and John (perhaps twins), bap. in 
St. Paul's, Halifax, June 29, 1773, the former of 
whom m. in Horton, Oct. 30, 1794, Jemima, dau. of 
Capt. William and Jemima (Calkin) Bishop, b. July 
24, 1774, d. Aug. 13, 1832 ; and d. Nov, 11, 1827. Wil- 
liam's eldest son was Elias Burbidge Best, b. Aug. 
27, 1795. John Best m. in Horton, Nov. 10, 1796, 
Hannah, dau. of Benjamin Peck, and had a child, John 
Peck, bap. in St. John's parish, Cornwallis, at three 
weeks old. May 19, 1798, The mother, Hannah, 
(Peck), died May 6, 1798, in the 20th year of her 
age, and is buried in the Oak Grove cemetery, at 
Kentville. Elias Burbidge Best and Mary Burbidge, 
were m. March 13, 1799, and had children: William 
Henry, bap. in St. John's parish, at two months old, 
March 11, 1800 ; Richard Tritton, bap. Sept. 10, 1802 ; 
James Burbidge, bap. Feb. 10, 1804. 
ii Richard, m. Dec. 27, 1783, in Cornwallis, Lavinia, dau. of 
Stephen and Sarah Emerson. Children of Richard 



566 KING'S COUNTY 

and Lavinia (Emerson) Best were: William, b. Dec. 
27, 1784; Samuel Blow, b. Sept. 25, 1786; Zaceheus 
Butler, m. by Rev. Edward Manning, Jan. 19, 1819, 
Sarah, dau. of John and Katherine Beckwith, b. Aug. 
8, 1776. Eichard was a Lieutenant in King's County- 
militia in 1872, and active in St. John's parish in 
1784. 



Christopher Best of Horton, who may have been a son of Richard, 
or of John, m. June 24, 1786, Rose Pick, and had children : Robert, 

b. March 28, 1787; Christopher, b. Aug. 14, 1791; Sarah, b. ; 

James, b. ; Francis, b, ; John, b. ; Harriet Ma- 
tilda, b. . 

James Edward Best (whose parentage we do not know), m. June 
26, 1852, Emeline, only dau. of William Bennett Webster, M. D., 
who d. Sept. 15, 1864, aged 36, leaving two sons, Frederic and 
Joseph. John Best, living in Aylesford, m. Elizabeth Mumford, 
and had children: Margaret J., b. March 26, 1826; Mary Ann, b. 
Oct. 30, 1828 ; Albert D., b. July 8, 1833. In Cornwallis, Sarah Best 
and James Sanford were m. July 22, 1827. Among the applicants 
for grants in Cumberland, near the Isthmus of Chignecto, in 1763, 
were William Best, Sr., and Joshua Best. Several members of the 
Best family are buried in Fox Hill burying ground, Cornwallis. 
Materials for an adequate sketch of the Best family have not been 
obtainable by the author, but he hopes that some member of the 
family, using the above facts for a beginning, will collect material 
for a Genealogy. The family has many important representatives in 
Canada and the United States. 



THE BIGELOW FAMILY 

The Bigelow family of King's County is a very important branch 
of the New England family descended from John Bigelow and his 
wife Margaret (Warren), who were m. at Watertown, Mass., in 
1642, and had 13 children, the fifth of whom, Samuel, b, Oct. 28, 
1653, m. June 3, 1674, Mary Flagg, and had a son, Sergt. Isaac, b. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 567 

May 19, 1691, who m. in Watertown, Mary Bond, and removed to 
Colchester, Conn. In his will, made Nov. 17, 1749, he mentions his 
sons, Elisha and Isaac, and his daus,, Marcy Fitch, Mary Waters, 
Hannah Clark, and Sarah Skinner. 

His 2d child, Isaac^, the Cornwallis grantee, was b. in Colchester, 
May 4, 1713, m. March 14, 1734, Abigail, dau. of Ebenezer and Abi- 
gail (Lord) Skinner, of Colchester, and in 1760, or '61, came to 
Cornwallis. It is said, however, that after a few years he returned 
to New England, with part of his children, and there spent the rest 
of his life, dying! finally in Barre, Vt., in which town he was buried. 
Children : 

i Abigail, b. Jan. 1, 1735, m. to Daniel Pratt, of Colchester, 

Conn., and lived there. 
ii Ann, b. March 7, 1736, m. Jan. 31, 1760, to Judah, son of 

Jonathan Wells, and came to Cornwallis. 
iii Isaac, b. Nov. 17, 1737, m. Mary Chamberlain, and was a 

grantee in Cornwallis. 
iv Timothy, b. Nov. 18, 1739, m. Khoda Williams. 
V Amasa, b. Dec. 28, 1741, d. Jan. 18, 1742. 
vi Mary, b. Feb. 9, 1743, m. Sept. 9, 1761, in Colchester, 

Conn., Reuben Beebe. 
vii Lydia, b. May 2, 1745, m. Jan. 30, 1772, in Cornwallis (by 

Rev. Benaiah Phelps), to Ezra, son of John and Abi- 
gail Pride, of Norwich, Conn, 
viii Margaret, b. Aug. 2, 1747, m. Sept. 10, 1765, to Nathan, 

son of Jonathan and Mercy Longfellow. 
ix Jerusha, b. March 8, 1749, m. Dec. 4, 1766, to Andrew 

Newcomb, b. in Lebanon, Conn., April 15, 1747. They 

removed from Cornwallis to N. D., in 1796. He d. in 

N. B., Jan. 12, 1828. 
X Ruby, b. Dec. 14, 1750, d. June 5, 1759. 
xi Samuel, b. Nov. 1, 1752, m. June 9, 1799, Naomi Gardner, 

and lived in Nantucket, 
xii Amasa, b. Feb., 11, 1755, m. Nov. 9, 1773, Roxana or 

Rosina, dau. of Reuben and Nem Cone, 
xiii Addi, b. Oct. 18, 1757, m. to Zelinda Ingalls. See for this 

family the N. E. Hist, and Gen. Register, Vol. 53. 

Amasa2 Bigelow (Isaaci), b. Feb. 11, 1755, m. Nov. 9, 1773, Rox- 
ana, dau. of Reuben and Nem Cone. He was a ship builder and was 
killed while at work on a vessel, in 1799. His widow was m. (2), 



568 KING'S COUNTY 

April 10, 1806, to James Lyons, His children were: Ebenezer, b. 
Feb. 13, 1774, m. April 28, 1803, to Ann, dau. of Capt, John and 
Catherine Rand ; John, b. Sept. 24, 1775, m. Tirza Newcomb ; Daniel, 
b. Aug. 19, 1777, m. May 5, 1804, Emma Johnson, of Horton ; Reu- 
ben, b. Aug. 4, 1779, m. Lavinia Skinner; Gideon, b. Sept. 28, 1781; 
Mary, b. June 22, 1783, m. April 20, 1803, to William, son of 
Thomas and Mary Rand, and d. in 1864 ; Abigail, b. March 20, 1785, 

m. March 17, , to Alfred Skinner; Isaac, b. March 23, 1787, m. 

Sept, 15, 1817, Lavinia, dau. of Stephen Loomer; Sarah, b. Jan, 17, 
1789, m. March 22, 1810, to Benjamin, son of Capt. John and Cath- 
erine Rand; Rachel, b. , m. Dec. 27, 1808, to David, son of 

Stephen and Catherine Loomer, and d. in 1849. For further infor- 
mation concerning the Bigelow family, see the Cornwallis Town 
Book and the Bigelow Genealogy, published in 1890. 



THE BILL FAMILY 

In the list of Cornwallis grantees will be found three members of 
the Bill family. Amos, Ebenezer and Edward. The ancestries 
of these men, respectively, were as follows, Ebenezer (Samuel, 
Philip, John) ; Edward (Joshua, Philip, John) ; Amos (James, John, 
Philip, John). These grantees were all born in Connecticut, their 
earliest ancestor in America, however, having settled in Boston. 
Ebenezer^ Bill, from whom the most prominent members of the 
family in King's county have been descended, was a son of Samuel 
and Mercy (Haughton) Bill, of Groton, Conn., and was b. perhaps 
in 1696. He m. Sept, 8, 1726, in Lebanon, Conn,, Patience Ingraham. 
Children : 

i Samuel, b. Sept. 25, 1719, in Groton, Conn., m. Sept. 16, 
1742, Sarah Bond, and by her had 8 children. He 
probably m. (2) Mary , and in N. S. had 3 chil- 
dren by her. He is supposed to have lived in N. S. 
for some years, and then to have returned to Con- 
necticut. 

11 Bridget, b. Dec. 14, 1727, in Lebanon, Conn, 

iii Beulah, b, Appril 30, 1730, 

iv Hannah, b, Aug. 10, 1732, 

V Jonathan, b. and d. in 1734, " 



FAMILY SKETCHES 569 

vi Ebenezer, b. July 11, 1737. 

vii Ensign Thomas, b. Feb. 28, 1741-2, m. (1) Anna Phelps, 
(2) ; remained in Conn. 

viii Asahel, b. April 7, 1748, in Lebanon, m. in Cornwallis, 
June 18, 1778, Mary, dau. of Caleb and Mary (May- 
hew) Kand, and settled in Billtown. He had children : 
Meltiah, b. May 23, 1779, d. young; Sarah, b. Oct. 11, 
1785, m. to James Calkin; Asael, b. Oct. 8, 1787, d. 
young; Eebecca, b. Aug. 13, 1789, m. to Samuel 
Rockwell; John Mayhew, b. July 9, 1791, m. (1) 
Sarah DeWolf, (2) Mrs. Jane Bentley; Mary Eliza, 
b. Nov. 25, 1793 or 4, m. June 20, 1815, to Stephen, 
son of Stephen and Elizabeth (Woodworth) Eaton, 
b. March 23, 1792; Lavinia, b. Oct. 2, 1799, m. to 
Thomas Hemining ; Hon, Caleb Rand, b. Jan. 9, 1802, 
m. Rebecca Cogswell; Rev. Ingraham Ebenezer, 
D. D., b. Feb. 19, 1805, m. (1) Apr. 20, 1826, Isabella, 
dau. of Thomas and Ann Lyons, b. Jan. 28, 1806, (2) 
Mrs. Love. 

Of this family, Hon. Caleb Rand^ Bill, m. Feb. 1826, Rebecca, 
dau. of WiUiam and Eunice (Beckwith) Cogswell, and had chil- 
dren : Nancy Cogswell, b. Dec. 29, 1826, m. in 1845 to Charles Deni- 
son Randall, b. in 1816 ; William Cogswell*, M. P. P., b. Jan. 10, 1828, 
m. (1) in 1851, Ethelinda, b. in 1828, dau. of John and Mehitable 
(Ruloffson) Dodge, of Wilmot, Annapolis county, (2) his first wife's 
sister, Arabella Dodge ; Eunice Ann, b. April 9, 1829, m. as his first 
wife to Isaiah Shaw Dodge, b. in 1830, brother of Ethelinda and 
Arabella Dodge above. By his first marriage William Cogswell Bill, 
M. P. P., had children: Caleb Rand^ b. July 31, 1852, Collector of 
Customs at Wolfville, m. Margaret Bligh ; Arabella ; Ingram Ebene- 
zer ; Nancy, m. to Rupert Eaton Harris ; Mary. By his second mar- 
riage he had children : Rose, m. to John W. Eames, of Bridge water, 
England; Edward Manning, Judge of Probate for Shelbume 
county, m. Maude Haley; Catharine, m. to Clifford Harris. Caleb 
Rand^ Bill, Collector of Customs at Wolfville, was for some years a 
captain in the Canadian militia. He was twice (1890 and 1891) a 
candidate for election to the Dominion House of Commons, but both 
times was defeated by a small majority. He m. Margaret, dau. of 
Jeremiah Bligh, and has 6 children: William Cogswell, Margaret 



570 KING'S COUNTY 

Augusta, Jeremiah Emerson, C. E; John Philip, B. A., LL.B, ; Eth- 
elinda, Earl Gordon, B. A., Ph. D. 

Amos Bill, the grantee, son of Lieut. James and Kezia (French) 
Bill, of Lebanon, Conn., was b. in Lebanon, probably in 1730, and m. 

(1) Jerusha , who d. in Cornwallis, Dee. 22, 1766. Children 

recorded in Lebanon, Conn. : Jerusha, bap. Dec. 17, 1758 ; Bethia, 
bap. May 20, 1759. Eecorded in Cornwallis: Lucy, b. June 8, 1761; 
Asenath, b. July 28, 1763 ; Lydia, b. April 25, 1765. On the Corn- 
wallis Town Book is also recorded of the following children of Amos 
and his second wife, Alethea, Bill : Anne, b. May 27, 1768 ; Sarah, b. 
June 16, 1769; Rebecca, b. April 4, 1771. A Bill Genealogy, more 
or less complete, was published in 1867. 



THE BISHOP FAMILY 

Eleasar Bishop or Bischoppe is said to have come to New London^ 
Conn., from either the Island of Guernsey, or of Jersey, in 1692, He 
m. in New London, June 22, 1704, Sarah, daughter of Richard Dart, 
and had several children. Among them was a son John, b. in 
New London, in 1709, d. at Greenwich, Horton (and was buried at 
Wolfville), Oct. 28, 1785. He m. at New London, May 20, 1731, 
Rebecca Whipple, who d. Oct. 17, 1751, Later he m. Mrs, Hannah 
(Allen) Comstock, b. in 1712, daughter of Samuel and Lydia (Hast- 
ings) Allen, and widow of Gideon Comstock, of Montville, New 
London, who was drowned by the upsetting of a canoe. In June, 
1760, John Bishop came with his four sons, John, Jr., William, 
Peter, and Timothy, to Horton, ' ' bringing with him provisions for a 
year, and enough stock to satisfy the demands of a good sized 
farm." John lived, as did his son Timothy, and his great-grand- 
son Ebenezer, at Greenwich, on the property later occupied by his 
great grandson Edward Russell Bishop. His will, recorded in the 
Probate Office at Kentville, mentions a grist-mill he had erected on 
this place, the old mill-dam of which is still to be seen. 

Col. John2 Bishop, Jr., (John^), b, in 1729, in New London, Conn., 
d. at Gaspereau, Aug. 31, 1815, in his 85th year. He lived at Gas- 



FAMILY .SKETCHES 571 

perau and was buried in the cemetery near Simpson's Bridge. 
Though he was one of the original grantees of Horton, he and his 
1st cousin, George Bishop, son of another son of the original 
Eleazer; purchased a great deal of land at Gaspereau. John^ was 
a land surveyor and it is said that a plan of the township was 
prepared by him. He was also a Justice of the Peace. He m. (1) 
July 16, 1751, Mary, widow of Ichabod Avery of Groton, Conn., 
daughter of James Forsyth of that place, and probably sister of 
Gilbert Forsyth, the Horton grantee. She d. Mar. 22, 1808, in her 
85th year, and was buried in the cemetery near Simpson's Bridge. 
Col. John Bishop m. (2) Dec. 13, 1808, Mrs. Ruth (Sheffield) Har- 
ris, probably widow of Elisha (Lebbeus) Harris, and earlier, widow 
of John (Benjamin) Belcher. She d. Sept. 1, 1827, in her 67th year, 
and is buried in Wolf ville. Children by first marriage : 

i Amelia, b. Jan. 31, 1754, in New London, m. (1) in 1722, 

to Charles Dickson, Jr., of Horton, and Onslow, who 

d. Sept. 3, 1796, (2) to Joseph McLean. She d. in 

Nov., 1846. 
ii Hannah, b. July 20, 1756, in New London, m, June 4, 

1774, to Henry, son of Abel and Jean Burbidge. 
ill Charles, b. Dec. 3, 1758, in New London, m. (1) , 

(2) Philander, dau. of Ebenezer and Lydia (Fish) 

Fitch, 
iv John, b. Mar. 31, 1764, in Horton, m, prob. a dau. of 

Daniel Harris. 

Capt. William^ Bishop (John^), b. in 1732, in New London, d. 
in Horton, Feb. 21, 1815, in his 83d year. He is buried in Wolf- 
ville. In Aug., 1757, he was a sergeant in Capt. John Latimore's 
company of the 3rd Conn. Regt., Col. Gurdon Saltonstall, called out 
for the relief of Fort "William Henry. He also served in the Indian 
Wars. In 1781, he was one of a party who, under Lieut. Belcher, 
rescued a schooner laden with provisions, from Minas Basin for 
St. John, that had been captured by an American privateer in 
Minas Basin. After a sharp fight off Cape Split the privateer was 
driven away. Capt. Bishop m., April 20, 1761, Jemima Calkin. 
He lived in Greenwich, on what afterward became the Eli Griffin 
place. His children were: William, b. Feb. 18, 1762, m. May 29, 
1788, Hannah dau. of Ezekiel and Phebe (DeWolf) Comstock, b. 



572 KING'S COUNTY 

Jan. 1, 1771, d. Jan. 31, 1854, he d. Jan. 29, 1837 ; Samuel Henry, 
b. July 27, 1767, in Halifax, m. (1), April 8, 1798, Anna Jacobs, of 
Halifax, (2) April 19, 1804, Bathsheba, dau. of Simon Fitch, and 
d. in Wolfville, Aug. 5, 1839; Bachel, b. Sept. 15, 1763, m. Dec. 
27, 1785, to Frederick, son of Ebenezer Fitch, of Canaan; Lucy, b. 
Sept. 10, 1765; Eleanor, b. Mar. 8, 1770, m. May 4, 1797, to Kev. 
Obadiah Newcomb, and d. Oct. 11, 1849; Joshua, b. Apr. 15, 1773, 

m. Williamson, and d. Dec. 11, 1848; Jemima, b. July 24, 

1774, m. Oct. 30, 1794, to Wm. Best, who d. Nov. 11, 1827, she d. 
Aug. 13, 1832 ; Elisha, b. Mar. 3, 1777, m. Sept. 24, 1816, Elizabeth, 
dau. of Phineas and Abigail (Thayer) Lovett, and d. at Eound Hill, 
Annapolis county, March 6, 1864; Hannah, b. June 8, 1780, m. to 
Enoch Forsyth, b. Oct 24, 1774, son of Jason and Mary (Anderson) 
Forsyth; Sarah, b. Oct. 17, 1782, m. (1) to Daniel, son of John 
Chipman, (2) to Deacon Silas Morse, of Granville, Annapolis 
county, son of Abner and Anna (Church) Morse. Sarah d. Aug. 
10, 1826. 

Deacon Peter^ Bishop (Johni), b. Aug. 6, 1735, in New London^ 
d. in Horton, Apr. 8, 1826. He lived at New Minas, and was 

buried at Wolfville. He m. (1) , (2) Phebe, dau. of Jonathan 

and Elizabeth (Strickland) Hamilton, b. Nov. 27, (1747?), and had 
children: Simeon B. ; Amy; William, m. May 7, 1780, Elizabeth 
Copp, and d. in Nictaux, Annapolis county, Dec. 6, 1833; Peter, b. 
Feb. 6, 1763, d. in 1842, m. in New London, Amy, dau. of Amos 

and Abigail (Smith) Bowles; Jonathan, b. Sept. 19, 1764, m. 

Anderson; John, b. at Wolfville, Aug. 18, 1766, d. Aug. 26, 1866, 
unm. ; Hannah, b., Aug. 18, 1768, m. to William Turner ; Eliphal, b. 
Nov. 18, 1770, m. Jan. 7, 1795, to John, son of John and Eleanor 
(Hackett) Coldwell; Phebe, b. Feb. 24, 1773, m. to David Cold- 
well; Jeremiah, b. Apr. 18, 1775, d. June 20, 1856, m. Keziah, 
dau. of Eliphalet and Abigail (Sutherland) Coldwell, b. May 19, 
1777, d. Nov. 7, 1865; Eleasar, b. Aug. 3, 1777, d. in 1865, m. Jan. 
22, 1803, Hannah Curry; Esther, b. Sept. 18, 1779, d. 1840, m. 
at Hopewell, N. B., in 1801, to John, son of Andrew and Jerusha 



FAMILY SKETCHES 573 

(Bigelow) Newcomb, b. Dee. 31, 1776; James, b. in 1876, d. Oct. 12, 
1856, m. Jan. 22, 1813, Lydia Martin of Gasperean, b. in 1794, d. 
Feb. 9, 1859; Harriet, m. to James, son of John and Bathsheba 
(Whipple) Turner. 

Timothy2 Bishop (John^), b. July 22, 1740, in New London, d. 
at Greenwich, Horton, Jan. 10, 1827. He m. (1) Apr. 1, 1762, 
Mercy Harding, undoubtedly dau. of Abraham and Mercy (Vibber) 
Harding, b. Jan. 30, 1742, d. Aug. 22, 1783, (2) Dec. 18, 1783, Mrs. 
Mercy (Gore) Newcomb, widow of Simon Newcomb, and dau. of 
Moses and Desire (Burns) Gore, b. in Preston, Conn., Feb. 10, 
1743, d. in Horton, June 5, 1827. By his 1st wife Timothy Bishop 
had children: Abigail, b. Apr. 3, 1763, m. to Ebenezer Fitch; Silas, 
b. Oct. 2, 1764, m. to Anna Wells; Rebecca, b. July 22, 1766, m. 
to Elijah Calkin; Eimice, b. April 6, 1768, m. to James Prentice 
Harris ; Ezra, b. Mar. 20, 1770, m. Jerusha Newcomb ; Amy, b. July 
4, 1772, m. to Oliver DeWolf (Jehiel and Phebe) ; Timothy, b. May 
7, 1774, m. to Eunice Coldwell; Mercy, b. Feb. 8, 1776, m. to Abra- 
ham Seaman; Mary, b. Feb. 8, 1776 (a twin with Mercy), m. to 
Newton Wells; Anna, b. Mar. 29, 1779, m. to Samuel Cox. By his 
2nd marriage, to Mercy (Gore) Newcomb, Timothy had childen: 
Ebenezer, b. Sept. 13, 1784, d. in 1846 ; Olive, b. Aug. 9, 1789. Of 
these two children, Ebenezer, m. Nov, 1, 1809, Anne, dau. of Jesse 
and Chloe (Olney) Lewis, of Parrsborough, b. Dec. 24, 1790, and 
had children: Jesse Lewis, b, Jan. 30, 1812, m. Elizabeth Ann 
Johnson; Augusta Maria Theresa, b. Oct. 23, 1815, m. to Edward 
Young, LL.D. ; John Leander, M. D., of Philadelphia, Penn., and 
Washington, D. C, b. July 5, 1820; Edward Russell, b. Sept. 30, 
1822 ; Ann Sophia, b. May 12, 1825 ; Nancy Desire, b. Feb. 1, 1828. 
Olive was m. Dec. 20, 1821, to George Roy, of New Minas, formerly 
of Edinburgh, Scotland, founder of the Roy family of Horton, and 
had children: Elizabeth Ann; Catherine Jane; John George; Bar- 
bara Maria; William Alexander. Timothy Bishop lived in Green- 
wich, on the place that his father had previously owned. After 
his death, as we have said, his son, Ebenezer, and his grandson, Ed- 
ward Russell, lived there. 



574 KING'S COUNTY 

Of the Bishop families of Horton many members have occupied 
positions of trust and many have attained prominence in the com- 
munities where they lived. Such have been, Col. Samuel Henry, 
and Dr. John Leander Bishop, sketches of whom will be found 
in the Personal Sketches in this book; Jesse Lewis Bishop, of 
Horton, brother of Dr. John Leander; Gustavus E. Bishop of Horton, 
son of Jesse Lewis, a man of much public spirit, for many years 
until the present Township Clerk; "Watson Bishop, of Dartmouth, 
N. S., Superintendent of Water Works for that town; Calvin 
Bishop and his sons of Kentville ; and Charles A. Bishop, of the Illi- 
nois Bar, son of Adolphus and Joanna (Willett) Bishop of Horton, 
created a county judge in 1886, and circuit judge in 1897. He 
was b. in Horton, Sept. 26, 1854, and d. in Illinois, Aug. 26, 1907. 



THE BLACKMORE OR BLACKMER FAMILY 

Branch Blackmore, the CornwaUis grantee, received his 
grant in 1764, but about 1771 he sold at least part of his land to 
Judah Wells, and returned to Plymouth, Mass., from which place 
he had come. He was b. in 1733, and in 1756, m. in Plymouth, 
Sarah Waite. Children: Mary, b. in 1758, d. in Cornwallis, Aug. 
22, 1761; William, b. in 1760, m, Mary Bly; John, M. D., b. in 
Cornwallis, Jan. 8, 1763 ; Sarah, b. Nov. 28, 1764, m. to James Har- 
low, of Plymouth, Mass.; Mary, July 10, 1767; Mercy, twin with 
Mary; Betty, b. in 1769, m. to Joseph Johnson, of Plymouth; 
Richard, b. in 1772 ; Jerusha, m. to Seth Holmes. 



THE BLANCHARD FAMILY 

The Blanchard family in King's County was founded here more 
recently than most of the families sketched in this book. Its 
founder in Nova Scotia was Col. Jotham^ Blanchard, a Loy- 
alist from Peterborough, N. H., who with his wife Elizabeth 
(Treadwell) settled in Truro, in 1785. His children were: John, 
b. about 1767 ; Sarah, b. about 1769 ; Elizabeth, b. in 1770 ; Rebecca, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 575 

b. in 1772; Hannah, b. in 1774; Jonathan, b. April 21, 1776; Edward 
Sherbm-ne, b. in Feb. 1778. 

Edward Sherburne^ Blanchard (Jothami) was seven years old 
when he was brought to N. S. He m. Feb. 18, 1802, Jane, 4th dan. 
of Matthew and Janet (Fisher) Archibald, and d. Dec. 24, 1856. 
His widow d, Feb. 9, 1873. Their children were: Nancy; Jane, 
m. June 25, 1844, to John Waddell, M. D. ; Charles, Sheriff of Col- 
chester county; George Augustus, Judge of Probate for King's 
County and County Judge ; Jonathan ; James Fleming ; Elizabeth, 
m. Sept. 23, 1837, to Rev, James Waddell; John, of King's County; 
Edward ; Sarah ; William Henry, Barrister, of Windsor, N. S. 

George Augustus^ Blanchard (Edward Sherburne^, Jotham), 
was b. in Truro, N. S., Sept. 6, 1811, and m. Oct. 27, 1840, 
Jane, dau. of the Eev. James Robson. He died in Kentville, June 
3, 1890. He became Judge of Probate, for King's County, and 
Judge for the counties of King's, Hants, and Colchester. This 
position he held at the time of his death. See personal Sketches. 
Children : 

i Clara, b. Oct. 16, 1841. 

ii Florence, m. to Stephen Dodge, M. D., of Halifax. 

iii Bertha, m. as his 2nd wife, to Rev. Joseph N. Chase. 

iv Aubrey, b, Apr. 6, 1847, m. his cousin, Alice M. Blanch- 
ard, and d. Sept, 17, 1899. 

V Edward Sherburne, M. D., for many years Medical head 
of the Insane Asylum at Charlottetown, P. E. I., m. 
Ella May Lea, and resides at Charlottetown. 

vi James Robson, m. Catherine M., dau. of Henry Prat, Esq., 
and has a family. 

John^ Blanchard (Edward Sherburne^, Jotham^), b. in Col- 
chester county. Mar. 24, 1822, m. probably in 1848, Mary Gertrude 
WoUenhaupt (dau. of Henry Caspar and Anna Barbara (Lenox) 
WoUenhaupt), b. Dec. 23, 1821, and d. in Shelburne, N. S., Sept. 
2, 1909. Mrs. Blanchard d. in Kentville, Mar. 2, 1893. Children: 

i Henry WoUenhaupt, d. unm. 

ii Charles Melville, m. Emma, dau. of Hon. Charles and 
Sarah (Tupper) Dickie. 



576 KING'S COUNTY 

iii George Frederick, m. (1) Louisa, dau. of Geo. Masters, 

(2) . 

iv Anna Barbara, m. to Percy Gifkins, Manager of the 

Dominion Atlantic R. R. Company. 
V Frank Clifford. 

vi Jessie, m. to A. Milne Fraser, of Halifax, 
vii Rosina Gertrude, m. to A. Milne Fraser. 



THE BLIGH FAMILY 

Thomas^ Bligh, b. in England, Dec. 2, 1777, came to Philadelphia, 
about 1798, and in 1799 or 1800 removed to Nova Scotia and 
settled "at the foot of the North Mountain, King's County, just 
north of the present village of Lakeville." It is said that Thomas 
Bligh was accompanied to Philadephia by a relative (whether 
uncle, or cousin, or what, is not known), who may have founded 
a Bligh family since known in Penna. Thomas Bligh m. in Corn- 
wallis, Oct 9, 1606, Margaret Foote, dau. of a Scotchman, who 
had settled in King's County about 1770, the ancestor of the Foote 
family in King's. The children of Thomas and Margaret (Foote) 
Bligh were : 

i Geddes Samuel, b. Feb. 15, 1808, d. about 25 years of 
age. His most prominent descendant now in N. S., 
it is said, is William E. Bligh, of the firm of Bligh 
and Prince, Truro. 

ii William Andrew, b. Feb. 23, 1810, d. in 1828. 

iii James, b. Aug. 15, 1812, for many years a J. P. in King's. 
His only son now living is Harris Harding Bligh, 
K. C, D. C. L., of Ottawa. 

iv Anna, b. Dec. 21, 1814, d. young. 

V Jeremiah, b. Apr. 16, 1817, d. in 1885. His only children 
now living in N. S. are: Howard Bligh, Shipping 
Master of the Port of Halifax; Rupert; Rupert 
Bligh, of Lakeville, King's County; Margaret 
(Bligh), wife of Caleb Rand Bill, Collector of Cus- 
toms, Wolfville. 

vi Abraham, b. Apr. 25, 1820, d. in 1889. His only living 
children are: Enos, Oatley, and Leverett, of Oak- 
ville; Sylvanus, of Berwick, Stipendiary Magistrate; 
and Mrs. Helena (Bligh) Fisher, of Waterville. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 577 

vii Margaret, b. Oct. 4, 1822, m. in 1844, to Charles Rockwell, 

of Lakeville, and d. in 1906. 
viii Rebecca, b, Apr. 21, 1825, m. to Lawson Rockwell, of 

Lakeville, 
ix Asael Bill, b. May 20, 1827, m. in Dec, 1857, Elizabeth 

Ann Coleman, and d. Sept. 20, 1888. 

Among the prominent representatives of this family, are: Harris 
Harding Bligh, K. C, D. C. L., Librarian of the Supreme Court 
of Canada. Editor of "The Consolidated Orders in the Council of 
Canada", compiler of ''The Dominion Law Index", 1890, "The 
Ontario Law Index in 1895", and "The Quebec Law 
Index" in 1898, and was one of the compilers of "The 
Dominion Law Index," 1898, and "The Nova Scotia Law 
Index," 1901. Dr. Bligh is the son of James and Sarah E. (La- 
mont) Bligh, and was b. Apr. 14, 1842. He grad. at Acadia Uni- 
versity, B. A., 1864, M. A., 1867, was admitted to the N. S. Bar, 
1868, and was made Q. C. in 1884. He practised law in Halifax 
for many years, but in July, 1892, was appointed Librarian to the 
Supreme Court of Canada. He m., Nov., 1872, Alice T., dau. of 
Samson Salter Blowers Smith, of Halifax. Frederick Pennington 
Bligh, Barrister, of Halifax, only son of Asael and Elizabeth Ann 
(Coleman) Bligh, b. Apr. 15, 1859, was educated in the Halifax public 
schools, at Dr. Benjamin Curren's well-known private school, and 
at Dalhousie University. He studied law in the office of Hon. 
Samuel Leonard Shannon, Q. C, was admitted to the bar at the 
age of 21, and on his admission became partner with Mr. Shannon. 
Hon. S. L. Shannon died in 1895, and since then Mr. Bligh has 
practised alone. He has twice been elected an alderman of Hali- 
fax, and May, 1909, was elected Deputy Mayor of Halifax; the 
latter position he still holds. He m. Nov. 5, 1907, Vera Josephine, 
dau. of Rupert and Clara Ells, of Upper Dyke Village, King's 
County, who died, May 22, 1908. 



THE BLISS FAMILY 

One of the Cornwallis grantees in 1764 was Nathaniel Bliss, for- 



578 KING'S COUNTY 

merly of Lebanon, Conn., youngest son of Nathaniel and Mehitable 

(Spafford) Bliss, of Lebanon, and born Aug, 5, 1736. He m. 

Eunice Fish, and had children : Eunice, b. June 15, 1758, m.. May 
31, 1782, to Isaac, son of William and Martha Beach; Irene, b. 
Jan. 5, 1761, m. May 31, 1779, to Elisha, son of David and Deborah 
(White) Eaton; Nathaniel, b. Apr. 11, 1763, in Cornwallis, m. 
about 1788, Margaret Forrest, of Cumberland county; Lydia, b. 
Nov. 21, 1766, m. Aug. 24, 1786, to Jabez, son of Silas and Susan- 
nah Weaver; Elijah, b. Apr. 19, 1770; Mary, b. Mar. 26, 1773, m. 
Sept. 18, 1795, to Patrick Mclnernay; James, b. Aug. 27, 1778, d. 
unmarried. Nathaniel Bliss, and his brother Elijah, who had ac- 
companied him to Nova Scotia, both died in Cornwallis of small- 
pox, probably in 1778, and Mrs. Eunice (Fish) Bliss was m. (2) 
June 29, 1786, as his second wife, to Silas Weaver, whose son Jabez 
married her daughter Lydia. 

Nathaniel Bliss the grantee was a third cousin of Capt. Luke 
Bliss, of Springfield, Mass., the father of Hon. Chief Justice Jona- 
than Bliss of New Brunswick; and also of Hon. Daniel Bliss, 
father of Hon. Judge John Murray Bliss of New Brunswick. The 
author of the Bliss Genealogy says (p. 151): "It is a remarkable 
fact, and without parallel in history, that three members of one 
family, viz., Chief Justice Jonathan Bliss, Judge Murray Bliss, 
and Judge Upham, sat on the judicial bench at the same time." 
One of the daughters of Judge William Blowers Bliss of the Nova 
Scotia supreme bench, son of Chief Justice Jonathan Bliss, was 
the wife of Bishop Binney of Nova Scotia, and another the wife of 
Hon. William Hunter Odell. Nathaniel Bliss the grantee was de^ 
scended in the 5th generation from Thomas Bliss, who came to New 
England from Belstone Parish, Devonshire. A sister of Thomas 
was Elizabeth, who was m. to Sir John Calcliffe of Belstone. 

The children of Patrick and Mary (Bliss) Mclnernay were bap. 
in St. John's parish, Cornwallis, as follows: Cornelius, b. Mar. 16, 
1798, bap. May 14, 1808; John, b. Feb. 13, 1799 (it is uncertain 
whether this is a birth or baptism) ; Margaret and Mary, bap. 
May 14, 1808. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 579 

THE BORDEN FAMILY 

One of the most important families of Canada at the present day 
is the Borden family of King's County, founded by Samuel Borden, 
son of Richard Borden, born in Fall Eiver, Mass., Oct. 25, 1705, 
died in New England probably in November, 1778. About 1735 he 
married Peace Mumford, of Exeter, Rhode Island, and studying sur- 
veying, was in 1760 appointed by the Nova Scotia government to 
lay out lands for the other New England planters. In 1764, while 
he was in Nova Scotia, he received a grant in Cornwallis, but on re- 
turning to New England he gave his land to his son Perry. His 
children were : Joseph, b. Oct. 14, 1736 ; Perry, b. in Tiverton, R. I., 
Nov. 9, 1739; Benjamin, b. in 1740; Ann; Abigail; Edward. Of 
these, Perry came to Nova Scotia and was the actual founder of the 
family here. 

Perryi Borden, son of Samuel, born in Tiverton, R. I., Nov. 9, 
1738, m. probably in Nova Scotia, Amy Percy, daughter of an Eng- 
lish officer, who bore him two sons. His first wife dying Dec. 2, 
1765, he m. (2) Oct. 22, 1767, Mary, dau. of Joshua and Mary Ells, 
b. May 25, 1745, d. in 1831. In the Borden Genealogy, published by 
Joel Munsell's Sons, Albany, in 1899, over four pages are devoted 
to this founder of the King 's County family. 

Children by first marriage : 

i Samuel, b. Sept. 1, 1762, returned to N, E. and became a 
successful business man in FaU River, Mass. 

ii Josepji, b. June 3, 1764, m. in 1793 Elizabeth, daughter 
of Oliver and Abigail (Ells) Cogswell, and had 2 
sons and 5 daughters. 

Children by second marriage: 

iii Lemuel, b. Sept. 26, 1768, married in 1795, Esther Pineo, 
and had 2 sons and 4 daughters. 

iv David, b. Jan. 28, 1770, married in 1793, Elizabeth Kins- 
man, and had two sons and five daughters. 

V Jonathan, b. July 29, 1771, married Feb. 17, 1814, Mary 
Miner. Children: Jonathan, b. Dec. 24, 1814; Mary 
Elizabeth, b. Sept. 6, 1816, married to Isaac Dickie; 
James, b. Feb. 24, 1820, married June 30, 1858, Sarah 
Adelaide Dickie; John; Anna A. 



580 KING'S COUNTY 

vi Perry, Jr., b. Feb. 17, 1773, married in 1809, Lavinia 

Fuller of Horton. 
vii Joshua, b. Dee, 3, 1774, married in 1809, Charlotte Fuller, 
viii William, b. Jan. 13, 1777, m. Aug. 2, 1804, Margaret, dau. 

of John and Katherine Eand, and had 8 children, 
ix Benjamin, b. Apr. 28, 1779, m. (1) Mar. 23, 1802, Martha 

Wells, (2) Nov. 13, 1823, Lavinia Pineo. By his first 

wife he had 9 children. 
X Edward, b. Aug. 9, 1781, m. Nov. 3, 1814, Abigail, dau. of 

John and Tabitha (Rand) Eaton, 
xi Abraham, b. Jan. 18, 1787, m. Dee. 3, 1817, Martha Mc- 

Gowan Dickie. 

Perry2 Borden, Jr., (Perryi,) b. Feb. 17, 1773, m. in 1809, La- 
vinia Fuller, of Horton. Children: 

i Jonathan, M. D., b. June 14, 1809, a physician of wide 
reputation in the county, who m. Maria Frances 
Brown, of Horton. 

ii William, b. May 25, 1811, d. May 23, 1845. 

iii Andrew, b. Feb. 14, 1816, m. (1), Catherine Sophia Fuller, 
(2), Eunice Laird. 

iv Amanda, b. Mar. 20, 1820, m. July 31, 1843, to John Cald- 
well. See Caldwell Family. 

V Ardelia Ann, b. June 20, 1821, m. (1), to Lewis Gilmore, 
(2) to John Fisher. 

vi Thomas, b. Nov. 25, 1822, m. Jane Cochrane and had 3 
sons. He died in the United States. 

Jonathan^ Borden, M. D., (Perry^, Jr., Perryi), b. in Horton, 
June 14, 1809, m. (1) in Horton, Sept. 24, 1845, Maria Frances 
Brown, of the well known Horton Brown family, daughter of 
Charles and Frances (Lothrop) Brown, b. April 18, 1814, See the 
Brown Family. Dr. Borden was a physician of wide reputation, a 
gentleman of dignity and culture, and a distinguished person in the 
county. His residence was on Canard street, Cornwallis. His chil- 
dren were: Hon. Sir Frederick Borden, K. C. M. G., b. May 14, 
1847 ; Maria Frances, b. May 15, 1864. 

The distinguished Minister of Militia for the Dominion of Can- 
ada, Sir Frederick Borden, K. C. M. G., M. D., LL.D., D. C. L., ap- 
pointed to the Privy Council of Canada in 1896, was born in Corn- 
wallis, May 14, 1847, graduated at King's College, Windsor, in 



FAMILY SKETCHES 581 

1866, and at the Medical School of Harvard University in 1868. He 
practiced medicine at Canning for some years, but in 1874 entered 
the Canadian House of Commons, as member for King's. He was 
re-elected in 1878, defeated in 1882, again elected in 1887, 1891, 
1896, 1900, 1904, and 1908. He was sworn to the Privy Council and 
appointed IVIinister of Militia and Defence in the Laurier admin- 
istration, July 13, 1896. Under his direction six military contingents, 
numbering 7,000 men and 5,000 horses, were dispatched to South 
Africa during the war of 1899-1902. For his services to the empire 
he was Knighted in 1902. He is also Surgeon Lt. Col. and Hon. 
Col. of the Canadian Army Medical Corps, and Knight of Grace 
of St. John of Jerusalem. He married (1) Oct. 1, 1873, 
Julia M., daughter of John H. Clarke, of Canning, who bore him 3 
children ; Elizabeth M. ; Harold Lothrop, born May 23, 1876, a brave 
young officer who was killed in South Africa ; J. Maude. He mar- 
ried (2) Bessie B. Clarke, sister of his first wife. Sir Frederick's 
residences are Stadacona Hall, Ottawa, and Canning, Nova Scotia. 
His clubs are, "Eideau" and ** Halifax." 

Andrew^ Borden (Perry, Jr.,2 Perryi), b. Feb. 14, 1816, m. (1) 
Catherine Sophia Fuller, (2) in Oct., 1850, Eunice Laird. Children: 

i Thomas Andrew, b. Oct. 29, 1842. 

ii Sophia Amelia, m. to Edward McLatchy. 

iii Hon. Eobert Laird, b. June 26, 1854. 

iv John William, b. Oct. 10, 1856. 

V Jidia Eebecea. 

vi Henry aifford, b. in 1870. 

Of this important Horton family, Hon., Hobert Laird Borden, 
K. C, M. P., LL.D., is the most widely known. He was educated at 
''Acacia Villa" School, Horton, studied law with the firm of which 
Hon. Sir Eobert "Weatherbe and his Honor Judge Graham were the 
leading partners, and in 1878 was admitted to the Nova Scotia bar. 
He was for some years president of the law firm of Messrs. Borden, 
Eitchie and Chisholm, in Halifax, and for ten years was president of 
the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society. In 1896 he was elected to the 
Canadian House of Commons for Halifax, and in 1900 was re- 



582 KING'S COUNTY 

elected. In 1905 he was elected by acclamation for Carleton, Ont., 
and in 1908, was elected for both Halifax and Carleton. Feb. 6, 
1901, he was elected leader of the Conservative party in the House 
of Commons, and this distinguished position he still holds. He 
married, Sept., 1889, Laura, daughter of T. H. Bond, of Halifax. 

John William Borden, brother of Hon. Robert Laird Borden, was 
educated at Acacia Villa School, in 1897 was made accountant in 
the Department of Militia at Ottawa, and in 1906 was appointed 
Paymaster General of the Canadian military forces. In 1905 he 
was made financial member of the Militia Council. He married in 
1891, Annie Frances, daughter of Frederick and Lydia Norris 
(Wells) Brown, of Wolfville. 

Henry Clifford Borden, brother of Hon. Robert Laird Borden was 
for som,e years a member of the law firm of Messrs. Ritchie and Co., 
of Halifax. At present he is engaged in mining enterprises. He 
married in 1889, Mabel Barnstead, who died in 1906. 

Besides Perry^ Borden, the founder of the chief King's County Bor- 
den family, there was in Cornwallis a John Borden, who also had 
a grant in 1764. Who he was we do not know, but he was perhaps 
an uncle of Perry. His wife was Elizabeth, and they had children : 
Thomas, born in Horton, Aug. 20, 1761, married in Cornwallis, 
March 25, 1788, Susanna, daughter of John and Sarah Cox, and had 
a son Henry, who married Jan. 10, 1819, Jean, daughter of William 
Burbidge; Elisha and John, twins, born in Cornwallis, Nov. 18, 
1763 ; Lydia, born April 18, 1767 ; Joseph, born July 8, 1770. 



THE BOWLBY FAMILY 

Richard Bowlby, who with his family settled near Lawrencetown, 
Annapolis county, in 1783, was of a New Jersey family. July 12, 
1821, Jordan Bowlby, a grandson of this Richard, married Eunice 
Tupper, and settled in Aylesford, dying there Feb. 5, 1828. He 
had children: Alice Maria, b. Aug. 11, 1822, married in 1842, to 
Gilbert Randall Chute; Achsa, b. May 24, 1824; Thomas Tupper, 
b. Jan. 6, 1826; Alfred, b. Oct. 1, 1827. Solomon Bowlby, a 



FAMILY SKETCHES 583 

younger brother of Jordan (both being sons of George, son of 
Richard), also married and lived in Aylesford. His wife was Susan 
Spriggs (Sloeumb), and they had children: Eunice, b. Feb. 14, 
1828 ; Joshua, b. May 24, 1830 ; George, b. Mar. 27, 1831 ; Elizabeth, 
b. Oct. 10, 1833; Jordan, b. Oct. 14, 1835; Achsa, b. Aug. 5, 1837. 
John Charles Bowlby, a Loyalist, also of Aylesford, was probably 
of the same New Jersey stock as the above Richard. 



THE BOWLES FAMILY 

Alexander Bowles, who died Jan. 18, 1820, and his wife Eliza- 
beth, had children: Mary, b. Mar. 4, 1774; Margaret, b. Aug. 22, 
1777, m. Nov. 14, 1809, to John Woodworth, Jr. (Silas) ; Sarah, b. 
Oct. 22, 1778 ; WiUiam, b. Feb. 28, 1780, m. Jan. 3, 1806, Prudence, 
dau. of Joseph and Lydia Rockwell; Alexander (twin with Wil- 
liam), d. Nov. 25, 1780; John, b. Nov. 5, 1782, m. Jan. 31, 1804, 
Margaret, dau. of Abraham Webster; Elizabeth, b. Nov. 25, 1784; 
Graham, b. Nov. 1, 1788, m. Jan. 24, 1814 or '15, Alice, dau. of John 
and Thankful Neweomb, and had 10 children. 

William and Prudence (Rockwell) Bowles had children born: 
Mary, b. Nov. 20, 1806; Jerusha, b. July 7, 1808; Elizabeth, b. Apr, 
22, 1810; Joseph, b. July 4, 1812; Pamela and Paulina, twins b. 
Jan. 31, 1815; William Campbell, b. Feb. 26, 1818; Alice Jean, b. 
Dee. 8, 1820. 

John and Margaret Bowles had children b. in Cornwallis : Mary, 
b. Jan. 17, 1805; Alexander, b. Jan. 28, 1807; Graham, b. May 20, 
1809; George William, b. July 22, 1811; Sarah Ann, b. Dec. 2, 1819. 

The children of Graham and Alice (Neweomb) Bowles were: 
Mary Alice, b. Nov. 29, 1815, d. Aug. 29, 1821 ; John Neweomb, b. 
Dec. 18, 1816, d. young; Thankful Margaret, b. Aug. 10, 1819; 
William, b. Mar. 9, 1821 ; Mary A., b. Nov. 15, 1823 ; Leonard, b. 
Sept. 18, 1824; Elizabeth, b. Aug. 18, 1826; John Neweomb, b. May 
29, 1829; George, b. Feb. 11, 1831; Elizabeth, b. Jan. 11, 1832, m. 
to Isaiah Shaw Pineo, son of William Pineo. 



584 KING'S COUNTY 

THE BRAGG FAMILY 

James Braggf, son of Shubal Bragg, a seafaring man from Vas- 
salboro, Maine, while on a visit to Cornwallis m., Jan. 24, 1816, 
Sarah S., 4th dan. of Timothy and Haldah (Woodworth) Eaton, b. 
April 23, 1797. A sister, Sophia Eaton, of Mrs. Bragg, was m., 
Jan. 23, 1823, to William Henry Getchell, also of Vassalboro, Me. 
The children of James and Sarah S. Bragg, were: Sarah Alice, m. 
in 1845, to her first cousin, Gideon Eaton Kockwell, b. in 1820; 

Shnbal, m. Abigail ; James, Jr., b. June 17, 1818, m. in 1841, his 

first cousin, Sophia Rockwell; William Gideon, b. June 15, 1819, 
m. Rebecca, dau. of Ephraim Clark (his name was legally changed 
to Kingsbury); Louisa Sophia, b. Feb. 8, 1822, m. to John Clark; 
Rosina Wing, b. Feb. 11, 1824 ; Abigail, m. to Denson Davis. James 
Bragg, Jr., who is said to have been the first male child born in 
Kentville, died on Friday, Sept. 11, 1891. 



THE BRECHIN FAMILY 
James Brechin, b. in Aberdeen, Scotland, d. at Halifax or 
Chester, Nova Scotia about 1796. He m. soon after 1788, Susanna 
(Tufts) Levy, widow of Nathan Levy, of Chester, N. S. His son 
James, Jr., b. in Halifax about 1796, m. in 1820, Eleanor, dau. of Percy 
and Sarah (Coldwell) Martin, of Horton, and d. in Halifax about 
1827. James, Jr.'s son, Major Perez Martin Brechin, b. in Halifax, 
Nov. 21, 1821, m. May 24, 1844, Harriet Elizabeth, dau. of George 
Harrington (Stephen, Stephen the Cornwallis grantee), b. Dec. 26, 
1824. Of the children of Major Perez Martin Brechin, the best 
known was William Pitt Brechin, M. D., b, in Cornwallis, 
Mar. 11, 1851, m. (1) Dec. 24, 1884, Alice Florence, dau. of James 
and Eleanor Augusta (Harrington) Edmonds, graduated at the 
Harvard Medical School, practised in Boston, and died there sud- 
denly, s. p., December 10, 1899. See the Preface to this book. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 585 

THE BREWSTER FAMILY. 

How many King's County families can trace themselves to 
founders of the Plymouth Colony, in Massachusetts, it would be 
very interesting to know. Among such families, at least, are the 
Brewsters, who bear the name of their famous ancestor, William 
Brewster, of the Mayflower, "Chief of the Pilgrims," the Starr 
families, who also have a Brewster ancestry, the Chipman family, 
who trace to John Howland and John Tilley of the Mayflower, 
and the Jehiel DeWolf family, who through Phebe (Cobb) DeWolf, 
also trace to John Howland and John Tilley. Samuel Brewster, 
one of the Cornwallis grantees, was the only son of Samuel and 
Tabitha (Baldwin) Brewster, and was b. in Lebanon, probably 
the North Parish, Mar. 30, 1729. He m. (1) Mar. 30, 1749, Agnes 
Sweatland, and in 1760, or '61, came to Cornwallis. If this record 
of his marriage is correct, it would seem as if he must have m. (2) 

Anne , for in the record of the marriage of his daus., Alice 

and Sarah, his wife is so given. The births of his children are not 
in the Lebanon records, but in the North Parish^ now called 
Columbia, they may perhaps be found. From the Lebanon deeds, 
however, we learn that Samuel Brewster had children: Samuel, 
Jr., the eldest brother, who remained in Lebanon; Alexander; 
Lydia ; Abigail ; Betty ; Sarah ; and Alice. Of these children, Sarah, 
was m. in Cornwallis, Feb. 9, 1769, to Benjamin Wiggins, and had 
a dau. Sarah, b. Sept. 9, 1769; Alice, was m. Nov, 11, 1772, to 
Stephen, son of Abner and Mary Hall, and had children : Mary, b. 
Dec. 24, 1773; Alice, b. May 1, 1775. All the children of Samuel 
Brewster, except Samuel, Jr., as we learn from the deeds men- 
tioned above, were in King's County, in 1780. The deeds, respec- 
tively, are as follows: "Lydia Brewster, Abigail Brewster and 
Betty Brewster, all of Cornwallis, Co. of King's Co., Nova Scotia, 
being lawful heirs of our hon'd. father, Samuel Brewster, late of 
Cornwallis, dec'd., our father dying seized of very considerable 
estate both real and personal, the greatest part of sd. estate lies in 
sd. Town of Cornwallis, the other part in Lebanon, the last men- 
tioned estate descended to our father from our hon'd. grandfather, 



586 KING'S COUNTY 

Samuel Brewster, late of Lebanon; we convey same to our eldest 
brother Samuel Brewster of Lebanon, as his whole portion of es- 
tate of his father; 29 July, 1780." And, 

"Alexander Brewster, Sarah Wiggans, Stephen Hall and Alice 
Hall of Cornwallis, Co. of King's Co., Nova Scotia, being lawful 
heirs of our father Sam'l. Brewster, late of Cornwallis (wording the 
same as in the other deed) to our eldest brother Sam'l. of Lebanon 
as his portion of father's estate. 29 July, 1780." 

The descent of Samuel, the Cornwallis grantee, from Elder 
William Brewster of the Mayflower, is (Samuel, "William, Benjamin, 
Jonathan, William). 

BROWN FAMILIES 

Among the Horton grantees were Darius and Elisha Brown, and 
a little later Jacob Brown. Of their immediate origin we have no 
certain record, they probably all came from Connecticut, of a fam- 
ily that started in New England with Nicholas Brown of Lynn, and 
was continued through his son, Thomas, b. at Lynn, in 1628, m. 
Mary Newhall, and had a son, Thomas, Jr., who removed to Ston- 
ington. Conn., and d. there Dec. 27, 1723. The descendants of 
Thomas, Jr., were long settled in New London, Conn., where they 
intermarried with the Denisons, Miners, Eandalls, and other im- 
portant families. Although a Genealogy of this Brown family has 
been published, we are not able through it to trace the Horton 
grantees. Some branches of the family the author of the 
Genealogy has evidently not been able, or has not tried, to trace. 
Jacob Brown the Horton grantee, it is said was a bachelor, 

Darius Brown, probably the Horton grantee, had a grant in 
Aylesford in 1774; Ezekiel Brown had aiso a grant in Aylesford 
at the same time, and Samuel had one there, Mar. 23, 1810. The 
Aylesford Town Book says that Darius Brown and Rachael Bass 
were married, June 9, 1799. It also says that George Brown mar- 
ried Eleanor Hodgens Apr. 3, 1823, and had a son Philip. A 
Thomas Ingersoll Brown, son of Thomas and Lavinia Brown, was 
b. in King's County, May 11, 1779. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 587 

The King's County Brown family that we know most about, was 
founded by Nathaniel Brown, of whom Dr. James Ratchford 
DeWolf has written: ''Nathaniel Brown was in 1773 resident in 
Boston and carried on trade with Horton. He afterward came to 
Horton to reside near his brother, Jacob Brown, one of the settlers 
of Horton in 1760." As early as 1738, this Nathaniel Brown was 
in Charlestown, Mass. He m. (1) in Boston, Dec. 12, 
1738, Abigail Colesworthy, (2) Mary Fox. In the battle 
of Bunker Hill his house in Charlestown was injured, or de- 
stroyed, and it was undoubtedly he who in 1775, as "Wyman 
says, "claimed for loss" in Charlestown. This claim, one of his 
descendants says, "was made on the British authorities, 
his house having been destroyed by the British guns 
in the Battle of Bunker Hill, but was not honoured. 
In 1781 he was of Pownalborough, Me., but probably 
soon after that he came to Horton. With him and his 
family came several slaves, "descendants of whom lived in "Wolf- 
ville and vicinity until a few years ago." His place in Horton 
was at Grand Pre, on the hill back of the station, almost opposite 
the Presbyterian Church. There he died, in 1797 or '98, his burial 
place being the burying ground back of the Methodist church. At 
his grave, the tombstone to his memory still stands. His wife Mary 
died in Horton in 1804, and was buried beside him. Children by 
first marriage: 

i Sarah, b. in 1739, bap. in Trinity Parish, Boston, Aug. 
17, 1740. 

ii Abigail, b. Aug. 8, 1740, bap. in Trinity Parish, Boston, 
Aug. 17, 1740. 

iii Mary, b. July 19, 1741. m. Dec. 14, 1758, to Capt. Abiel 
Lovejoy (probably the one mentioned by Sabine, 
as of Vassalborough, Me., elected to the Legislature, 
there in 1781, but his right to the seat disputed be- 
cause he "was not friendly to the cause of Amer- 
ica." He d. in Sidney, Me. 

iv Nathaniel, bap. in Trinity Parish, Boston, Feb. 10, 1743. 
buried Nov. 28, 1744. 

V Nathaniel, bap. in Trinity, Mar. 2, 1745. 

vi Stephen, bap. in Trinity, Oct. 11, 1747. 



588 KING'S COUNTY 

vii Sarah, m. in Horton, Nov, 26, 1773 to Edward, son of 
Nathan DeWolf, and had 11 children. She d. Nov., 
1819. 

viii Joseph (probably), b. Mar. 23, 1752. 

ix James, m. in Horton, after Dee., 1789, Mrs. Margaret 
(DeWolf) Witter, b. in 1755, dau. of Jehiel and 
Phebe ((3obb) DeWolf, and widow of Samuel Wit- 
ter (who d. Dec. 12, 1789). Mrs. Margaret Brown 
d. Mar. 16, 1803, and James Brown m. (2) Lavinia, 
dau. of John and Elizabeth (Graham) DeWolf, of 
Horton. Children by 1st marriage: Eachel, m. to 
Elisha Harris ; James, Jr. ; Newton, who settled in 
' Hantsport and had daughters, one of whom was the 
first wife of Hon. Judge Longley, of Halifax, an- 
other Miss Bessie Brown of Hantsport; Eliza, m. (1) 
to Christopher Merry, (2) to Caleb Forsyth. 

Children by second marriage : 

X William, b. Apr. 3, 1768. 

xi Samuel, b. June 21, 1769. 

xii Jonathan Fox, b, June 14, 1770. 

xiii Charles, b. Nov. 19, 1773, m. Frances Lothrop. 

xiv Abiel Lovejoy, m. Elizabeth Avery. 

It is said by the descendants of Nathaniel Brown that he had 

13 children by his 1st marriage, 11 by his 2nd. 

Charles2 Brown (Nathanieli), b. Nov. 19, 1773, m. Mar. 13, 1800, 

Frances, dau. of John and Eunice (Denison) Lothrop, b. in New 

Haven, Conn., Oct. 31, 1781. Children: 

i Charles Henry, b. Dec. 22, 1800, m. Lila Piers, 

ii Eunice Amelia, b. Mar. 30, 1802. 

iii Augustus, b. Aug. 29, 1803, m. Nancy Whidden. 

iv Edward, M. D., b. Sept. 7, 1805, never married. 

' V Julia, b. Nov. 18, 1807, d. Sept. 26, 1816. 

vi William, b. Jan. 18, 1811, m. Hamilton. 

vii Maria Frances, b. Apr. 18, 1814, m. to Jonathan Borden,, 

M. D. 

viii John Lothrop, b. Nov. 15, 1815, m. Elizabeth Whidden. 

ix Samuel Denison, M. D., b. May 12, 1819, m. Dickie. 

X Henry, b. Jan. 13, 1821, m. Mrs. Curry. 

xi Julia, b. Oct. 1, 1822, m. Jan. 29, 1857, to Harris O. 

McLatchy, M. D. 

xii Mary Elizabeth, b. Oct. 1, 1825, m. to James Leard. 

xiii Frederick, b. Dec. 28, 1827 m. Lydia Norris Wells. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 589 

Of these sons, Edward, M. D., John Lothrop, and Frederick, were 
among the best known men in their time in the county. Frederick 
m., Sept. 15, 1858, Lydia Norris Wells, dau. of James Simpson and 
Ann (Wells) Wells, and had one daughter, Annie Frances Brown, 
m. to John William Borden, of Ottawa. See the Wells family. 

[It is said that Charles^ Brown had a dau. Emily, who d. young] . 

Abiel Lovejoy2 Brown (Nathaniel^), m. Mar. 13, 1808, Elizabeth, 
dau. of Capt. Samuel and Mary Avery, b. Sept. 6, 1787, and re- 
moved to Maitland, Hants county. There husband and wife both 
died, but there is a tombstone to Abiel Brown's memory at Grand 
Pre. He d. April 24, 1844, aged 63. She d. May 15, 1852, aged 61. 
Children : 

i Mary Avery, b. Jan. 9, 1809, d. unm. in 1893. 

ii Thomas Avery, b. Oct. 8, 1810, m. in Halifax, Aug. 16, 
1853, Catharine Boggs, and had two daus., Frances 
and Catharine, the latter of whom was m., May 6, 
1884, to Rev. John Crisp. 

iii Louisa, b. June 8, 1812, m. Feb. 9, 1843, to Alexander 
McDougall, and had two daus., who d. unm. 

iv Sarah Matilda, b. Aug. 10, 1814, m. to John Simpson, of 
Grand Pre. 

v Caroline Millet, b. June 16, 1816, m. to Francis Cook, 
of Guysborough, and had 2 daus., who d. unm. 

vi Nancy, b. Apr. 8, 1818. 

vii Abigail Whidden, b. Sept. 3, 1821, m. Aug. 24, 1840, 
to Rev. James Buckley, youngest child of John and 
Jane (Hall) Buckley, of Scottish ancestry, who came 
to Nova Scotia from Lisburn, in the north of Ire- 
land. The Buckleys sailed for Philadelphia in 1823, 
but were wrecked on Sable Island, and brought to 
Halifax July 6th, of that year. In the Spring of 
1824, they removed from Halifax to King's Co. Of 
their 14 children, not all of whom came to N. S., 
Thomas remained in King's County, and had among 
other children, 2 sons who graduated at Harvard. 
Rev. James and Abigail Whidden (Brown) Buckley 
had 5 sons and 4 daus. Of their sons, Mr. Albert 
Hall Buckley, of Halifax, has given the author val- 
uable aid in compiling the Brown Family record. 

viii Charles Edward, b. , m. (1) Louisa Connell, of Fred- 



590 KING'S COUNTY 

erieton, N. B., (2) Georgina Howe, of St. John, N. B. 
He had 2 daus. by his 1st wife, a son and 3 daus. by 
his 2nd wife. 
Of these sons, Thomas Avery and Charles Edward were the 
well known wholesale druggists of Halifax. 



THE BRYMER FAMILY 
Colin Brymer m. Sept 18, 1766, Jemima, dan. of Benjamin and 

i Euphemia, b. Feb. 4, 1768, m. Dec. 13, 1798, to Simeon, 

son of James and Grace Fox. 

ii Jean, b. Jan. 13, 1770. 

iii Colin, Jr., Dec. 17, 1771. 

iv Alexander, b. Sept. 16, 1773. 

V Benjamin, b. Sept. 8, 1775. 

vi Charlotte, b. Sept. 20, 1777. 

vii Mary, b. July 5, 1779. 

viii Alden, b. Apr. 29, 1781. 

ix Jemima, b. Apr. 2, 1783. 

X Lavinia, b. May 29, 1785. 

xi Arabella, b. May 16, 1787, m. Mar. 19, 1815, to John T. 

Oothout. 

xii Ann, m. Dee. 9, 1807, to Henry Magee. 



THE BURBIDGE FAMILY 

One of the most conspicuous persons the county has ever had was 
Col. Johni Burbidge, M. P. P., born in Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, in 
1716 or '17. Coming to Halifax with, or in the wake of, the first set- 
tlers, in 1749, he remained in that town until between 1761 and '65, 
when he removed to Cornwallis. See Personal Sketches. He m. (1), 

probably in England, Elizabeth , who was b. in 1720, and d. 

in Cornwallis early in 1775, aged 55. He m. (2), in Halifax, Oct. 
14, 1775, Mrs. Rebecca (Dudley) Gerrish, dau. of Hon. William 
Dudley of Boston (Governor Joseph, Governor Thomas), and his 
wife Elizabeth (Davenport), and widow of Hon. Benjamin Gerrish, 
of the Nova Scotia Council, son of Capt. John Gerrish of Boston. 
Rebecca (Dudley) Gerrish-Burbidge was b. in Boston, May 28, 
1726, and d. in Concord, N. H., Jan. 30, 1809. She was buried at 



FAMILY SKETCHES 591 

Fox Hill, Cornwallis, Feb. 4, 1809. Col. John Burbidge d. in Corn- 
wallis, March 11, 1812, probably in his 96th year. It is believed 
that Col. Burbidge had no children by either marriage, but shortly 
after settling in Cornwallis he brought out from the Isle of Wight, 
four nephews : Henry, Elias, James and John, who all founded families 
many members of which lived and died in the county. These 
brothers were sons of Abel and Jean Burbidge, and they had sis- 
ters: Hannah, Nancy, Mary, and Jean, the last of whom was m. 
May 19, 1771, to John Best, son of William and Elizabeth Best. 
Whether the other sisters lived in Nova Scotia or not we do not 
know. 

Henry2 Burbidge, b. Feb. 26, 1740, m. (1) June 4, 1774, 
Hannah, dau. of Col. John Bishop and his wife Mary, who before 
her marriage to him was Mrs. Mary (Forsyth) Avery. Hannah 
Bishop was b. in New London, Conn., July 20, 1756. He m, (2) 
Ann Hutchinson, who survived her husband. She had no children, 
but she had four nephews, Charles F. Allison, who founded Mt. 
Allison University, and his three brothers, Joseph and Henry Bur- 
bidge Allison, of Sackville, and George A, Allison, of Cornwallis 
and Halifax. Henry Burbidge was his Uncle John's residuary 
legatee. Children : 

i Jane, b. Jan. 13, 1776, m. Mar. 24, 1794, to George Bishop. 

ii John, b. Feb. 26, d. May 6, 1778. 

iii Mary, b. Aug. 17, 1780, m. Mar. 13, 1799, to John Bur- 
bidge Best. 

iv Rebecca, b. June 19, 1783, m. Feb. 6, 1805, to Simon Cum- 
mings. 

V John, b. Aug. 29, 1785, m. Jan. 22, 1806, Mercy Fitch. 

vi Abel, b. June 27, 1787, m. April 10, 1808, Martha Phelps. 

vii Elias, b. July 4 (or 20), 1790, m, Rebecca, dau. of Arnold 
Shaw, of Newport, Hants Co. 

viii Henry, b. Apr. 25 (or 19,) 1792, m. Lusannah (Lucy), 
dau. of Arnold Shaw, of Newport, and d. when he 
was only 28. 

Elias2 Burbidge, b. Oct. 5, 1753, m. (2) March 9, 1788, Mary, dau. 
of John and Ann (Dudley) Lovell, of Boston. See sketch of Col. 
John Burbidge, M. P. P., in this volume. Mary Lovell was prob- 



592 KING'S COUNTY 

ably a grand-daughter of the noted Boston Tory schoolmaster, John 
Lovell, and she was a grand-daughter of Hon. "Wm. Dudley, of 
Boston, great grand-daughter of Governor Joseph Dudley, and 
great-great grand-daughter of Governor Thomas Dudley. Mrs. Ann 
(Dudley) Lovell d. in Boston, in April, 1775, and it is possible her 
daughter, Mrs. Elias Burbidge, may have lived with her aunt in 
Cornwallis. Children: 

i Dudley, bap. in St. John's Parish, Cornwallis, was blind 
and d. s. p. 

ii Elizabeth, b. Jan. 2, 1799, m. July 22, 1819, to William 
Brown Sargent, of Shelburne, N. S., son of John 
Sargent, whose mother was Catharine (Brown) a 
dau. of Ann (Dudley) Brown, sister of Hon. Wm. 
Dudley, of Boston, and so aunt of Mrs. Rebecca 
(Dudley) Gerrish Burbidge, of Halifax, and Corn- 
wallis. John Sargent and his wife (who had been 
Mrs. Margaret Barnard), parents of Wm. Brown 
Sargent, lived in Barrington, N. S. See the Sargent 
and Dudley Genealogies. 

James2 Burbidge, b. Feb. 9, 1755, m. Oct. 12, 1785, Content Bilby, 
of Horton, and had at least one child, a dau. Mary, b. Aug. 5, 1786, 
who became, Oct. 4, 1809, the first wife of Handley Chipman, 2d son 
of Wm. Allen Chipman, b. July 25, 1784. He d. Aug. 13, 1825, and 
is buried at Chipman 's Corner. 

Johns Burbidge, b. March 29, 1759, m. (2) April 6, 1790, Esther, 
dau. of Joseph and Hannah Chase, b. Oct. 30, 1767, d. March 29, 
1812. He d. Aug., 1830. Both are buried at Chipman 's Corner. 
Children : 

i John. 

ii William, m. Apr. 7, 1825, Rebecca Morton. 

iii A daughter, m. to James Rand. 

Henrys Burbidge (HenryS,) b. April 25, (or 19,) 1790, m. Lu- 
sannah (Lucy), dau. of Arnold Shaw, of Newport, Hants county, 
and d. at 28. Children : 

i Arnold Shaw, b. , m. (1) May 15, 1839, Lydia Amelia, 

dau. of David and Susanna (Strong) Eaton, b. Nov. 
3, 1816, d. June 27, 1856. He m. (2) Rebecca Borden. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 593 

Children by first marriage ; 

i David Henry, b. May 13, 1840, d. in Halifax, Oct. 9, 1888, 
and is buried at Camp Hill Cemetery. 

ii Susan Rebecca, b. Jan. 22, d. June 12, 1842. 

iii Margaret, m. to Jonathan Newton Borden, lately of 
Berkeley, Norfolk, Va. 

iv Charles Allison, b. June 15, 1845, d. Mar. 1, 1847. 

V Hon. George Wheelock, b. Feb. 6, 1847, Minister of Jus- 
tice and Judge of the Court of Exchequer of Canada. 
See Personal Sketches. 

vi Lydia Amelia, m. to James Boyle Uniacke Delancey, of 
Middleton, N. S. 

vii Frederick Arnold, b. May 2, 1853, d. Mar. 3, 1859. 

By his second marriage, Arnold Shaw Burbidge had at least one 
daughter, Julia Maria, m. Nov. 5, 1891, to Walter Ernest, son of 
James Stanley and Janet (Nicholson) Eaton. 

A William Greenwood Burbidge (son of William) m. Jan. 16, 
1822, Ruth, dau. of Isaac and Eunice Beach. 



THE BURGESS FAMILY 

Sethi Burgess, the Cornwallis grantee, was a son of Benjamin 

M. D., and Mercy Burgess, of Dartmouth, Mass., and was b. May 22, 

1736. He m. June 5, 1757, Abigail Howe, and in 1760 removed to 

Cornwallis. He d. there, Jan. 10, 1795 ; his wife d. in 1801. Children : 

1 Mary, m. to Eliakim Parker and had 8 children. 

ii Thankful, m. to John, son of John and Mercy (Barnaby) 

Newcomb, and had 11 children, the eldest of whom 

Abigail, b. Apr. 10, 1781, was m. to Daniel Cogswell. 

iii Benjamin, b. Feb. 19, 1762, m. in Aug. 1788, Abigail 

Hovey. Children : Mercy, b. May 24, 1789, m. Nov. 

9, 1814, to Elias Calkin; Seth, b. Dec. 23, 1790, m. 

Feb. 24, 1823, Rebecca Ann Cummings; Stephen, b. 

Nov. 2, 1792, m. Mar. 21, 1821, Elizabeth Nesbit; 

Abigail, b. June 28, 1795, d. Nov. 15, 1818; Earl, b. 

Feb. 10, 1797, m. Jan. 4, 1837, Pamelia Condon ; John 

b. June 8, 1800, m. Jan. 13, 1837, Hannah Chase, 

and had 5 children; Mary, b. Oct. 30, 1802, d. Mar. 

18, 1830; Benjamin, b. Oct. 8, 1804, m. (1) Sept. 23, 

1828, Hannah Cummings; Sarah Alice, b. May 11, 



594 KING'S COUNTY 

1806, m. to David Condon; William Forsyth, b. Oct. 
15, 1809, m. Sept. 24, 1845, Eachel R. Newcomb. 
iv Earl, b. June 18, 1764, d. aged 14. 

A Burgess Genealogy published in 1865, gives further details of 
the family. In its own name and through intermarriage with the 
families of Calkin, Chase, Condon, Cummings, Kinsman and New- 
comb, the Burgess family has had great prominence in the county. 



THE BYRNE FAMILY 

One of the most intelligent fruit growers and one of the few skill- 
ful florists the county has had was James Byrne, who died perhaps 
in 1908. He was probably of English parents, and these may have 
been James Byrne, who d. in Cornwallis, March 24, 1829, aged 50, 
and Margaret Byrne, d. July 31, 1859, aged 75, both of whom are 
buried in St. John's churchyard, in Cornwallis. James Byrne was 
for years a faithful member of St. James' Parish, Kentville. 



THE CALDWELL FAMILY 
Johni Caldwell came from the North of Ireland to Windsor, Hants 
county, from there removing to Grand Pre, where he bought land, 
including a dyke lot on the Grand Pre dyke. He had sons : William, 
Thomas, Joseph, and John Marshall ; and 3 daughters, who married 
respectively men named Eankin, Fairweather and Michener. Of his 
sons, William settled in Halifax and it is said became mayor of that 
city, his son, William, Jr., also later becoming mayor. Thomas set- 
tled in Windsor; Joseph lived and died at Grand Pre; and John 
Marshall, who lived in Cornwallis, was from 1855 to 1881, High 
Sheriff of the county. 

Joseph^ Caldwell, (Johni,) had children: John, m. July 31, 1843, 
Amanda, dau. of Perry and Lavinia (Fuller) Borden, b. March 20, 
1820, and has sons, James W. Caldwell, in the government service at 
Ottawa ; Joseph ; and four daughters, of whom one was m. to Joshua 
Kinsman^ one to Gurdon Calkin, one to Rev. William Sommerville, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 595 

one, Catherine, remaining single. James W. Caldwell of Ottawa, 
has 3 children, his only son being like his father, in the Canadian 
Government service. 

John MarshalP CaldweU, (Johni,) b. June 15, 1801, d. Nov. 6, 
1881, He m. in Cornwallis, Sarah Ann, dau. of Ezekiel and Mary 
(Nesbit) Kinsman, and had children: Mary Ann, m. (1) to John 
Bowles Woodsworth; (2) to Jonathan Borden, M. D. ; Ezekiel Kins- 
man, for many years until the present a resident of Kentville, who 
married a Miss Dill, and of whose children, a daughter is the wife of 
Harry Redden of Kentville. 



THE CALKIN FAMILY 

Hugh Calkin, b. in 1600, came with a Welsh company to America 
in 1640, from Monmouthshire, Wales. He lived successively at 
Marshfield, Gloucester, and Salem, Mass., at the last place being 
made a freeman Dec. 12, 1642. In 1651 he was a deputy to the 
General Court, but after that time he removed to New London, 
Conn., where and at Norwich, he had an active and very influential 
career. One of his descendants, Ezekiel^ Calkin (John, Samuel, 
John, Hugh), of Lebanon, Conn., b. Nov. 11, 1728, became a grantee 
in Cornwallis, July 21, 1761. He m. (1) Dec. 22, 1748, in Lebanon, 
Anna, dau. of John and Experience (Woodward) Dewey, b. Oct. 23, 
1727; (2) . 

Children by first marriage: 

i Eunice, b. Oct. 10, 1749, in Lebanon, m. Jan. 25, 1769, to 
William, son of William and Wilmot Hambley. 

ii Ahira, b. Nov. 8, 1752, m. (1) Dec. 24, 1772, Irenah, dau. 
of John and Phebe Porter, (2) Anna (Hamilton), 
widow of Nathan DeWolf, Jr., of Horton. Children 
by first wife: John, b. Dec. 21, 1773, m. June 9, 
probably 1796, Eebecca Beckwith ; James, b. Aug. 7, 
1775 ; Anna, b. Nov. 1, 1777 ; Elias, b. Oct. 28, 1779 , 
m, Nov. 9, 1814, Mercy Burgess ; Edmund, b. Nov, 16, 
1781, m. Dec. 20, 1809, Hannah, dau. of Marchant 
and Hannah Hand ; Ahira, Jr., b. July 17, 1784 ; Lois, 
twin with Ahira, Jr. 



596 KING'S COUNTY 

iii Ann, b. Sept. 2, 1757, in Lebanon, m. in Cornwallis, May 
15, 1777, Abel, son of John and Abigail English. 

Children by second marriage : 
iv John. 

V Joshua, moved to Gagetown, N. B. 
vi Elizabeth. 

vii Louis. Either he or his nephew, Louis, m. a Miss Doyle, 
of Eastpprt, Me. 

Elias3 Calkiii (Ahira2, Ezekieli,) b. in Cornwallis, Oct. 28, 1779, 
m. Nov. 9, 1814, Mercy, dau. of Benjamin and Abigail (Hovey) Bur- 
gess, b. May 24, 1789. Children : 

i Eliza Caroline, b. Nov. 23, 1815. 

ii Gurdon Ahira, b. Oct. 31, 1817. 

iii Benjamin How, b. Nov. 1, 1819, a successful merchant in 
Kentville, m. (1) Julia Lavinia, dau. of James and 
Lavinia (Denison) Denison, b. June 24, 1817, (2) 
Mary„ dau. of Thomas Pennington, of Whitehaven, 
England, who bore him children: Thomas Penning- 
ton, a merchant in Kentville, m. in P. E, I., Agnes 
Doherty, and has 3 children ; Julia Lavinia, m. to H. 
Percy Blanchard, and has 5 children; Barry Howes, 
M. D., m. to Ellen M. Mackenzie, and practises 
medicine at Jamaica Plain, Mass; Nellie Brockbank, 
m. to Wylie Rockwell, and has 1 child; Mary Cath- 
arine, m. to William P. Shaffner, Barrister, and has 
1 child; Hugh Earl, m, Agnes AUoway, and has 1 
child; Emily Marcia, m. to Colin Campbell, D. D. S., 
and has 2 children. 

iv Edmund, b. Jan. 11, 1823, m. Maria Palmeter, and had 
sons : Arthur Elroy, a prominent merchant in Kent- 
ville; Benjamin Hovey; and Charles. 

V Mary Jane, b. May 7, 1825, d. unm, 
vi Abigail, b. July 17, 1827. 

vii John Burgess, LL.D., b. Nov. 16, 1829, m. in Oct. 1854, 
Martha, dau. of Rev. William and Sarah Barry 
(Dickie) Sommerville, and has children: Sarah; 
Lillie; William Somerville; Carrie. 

viii Elias, b. July 8, 1832. 

John Burgess Calkin, M. A., LL. D., is one of the foremost edu- 
cators and authors Canada has produced. He began to teach in 
Cornwallis, in 1848, and in 1857 was appointed headmaster of the 



FAMILY SKETCHES 597 

Model School at Truro. In 1864 he was appointed the first In- 
spector of Schools for King's County, but in the autumn of the next 
year he returned to Truro as Professor of English and Classics in 
the Provincial Normal School, This position he held until 1869, 
when he succeeded the Rev. Alexander Forrester, D. D., as Principal 
of the Normal School. The last position he filled ably until the sum- 
mer of 1900, when he retired. From Acadia University Dr. Calkin 
early received the degree of M. A., in 1909, he was honored by Dal- 
housie University with the degree of LL.D. Dr. Calkin's authorship 
covers the following eudcational works: "General Geography of the 
World," 1869, revised several times and still in use in Nova Scotia; 
"Introductory Geography;" "History of the Dominion of Canada;" 
"Brief History of Great Britain;" "Historical Geography of Bible 
Lands;" "Notes on Education;" "A Discussion of Method, School 
Organization and School Management. ' ' 

In Horton also were Jeremiah Calkin, formerly of Lebanon, Conn., 
and his wife Mary. They had children : James, b. Jan. 27, 1757, m. 
Oct. 20, 1777, Elizabeth Wickwire ; John, b. June 28, 1759 ; Nathan- 
iel, b. July 14, 1763, in Horton, m. Jan. 3, 1788, Sabra, dau. of 
James Harris, b. March 21, 1765 ; Elijah, b. Feb. 3, 1766 ; Elisha, b. 
March 17, 1768 ; Keturah, b. Jan. 17, 1771 ; Jeremiah, Jr., b. July 11, 
1775 ; Mary, b. Dec. 9, 1780, probably m. March 3, 1808, to Nathaniel 
Harris; Elizabeth, b. Oct. 5, 1784. 

Dr. Brechin's manuscript says that Nathaniel Calkin, son of Jere- 
miah, was b. in Horton, July 14, 1763, m. Jan. 3, 1788, Sabra, dau. 
of James (Jonathan) Harris, b. March 21, 1765, and d. July 10, 1825. 
His wife d. July 5, 1825. They had children: Elisha, b. Dec. 14, 
1788, removed to Liverpool, N. S. ; after his death his widow be- 
coming the wife (prob. 2d wife) of Rev. "William Black (Elisha 
Calkin's son, Thomas P. Calkin, was postmaster in Liverpool) ; 

Lavinia, b. Dec. 22, 1789, m. to McLatchy ; Ann, b. April 18, 

1793 ; Olive, b. Sept. 26, 1796, m. to Magee, and d. Jan. or 

July 18, 1872; Sophia, b. Nov. 1, 1797, m. to McLatchy; 

Nathaniel Harris, b. Jan. 6, 1799, d. Oct. 5, 1885; Eunice, m. to 
Woodworth; Charlotte. 



598 KING'S COUNTY 

A prominent representative of the Calkin family in the comity is 
George E. Calkin, Esq., of Kentville, for many years postmaster of 
the town, and long engaged in business there. 



THE CAMPBELL FAMILY 

William Campbell, born in Scotland, m. in Cornwallis, March 31, 

1788, Eachael Lane, dau. of Capt. Thomas and Anne (Ascough) 

Moore. He was Judge of the Superior Court and Judge of Probate 

for King's County for many years. Children: 

i Anne, b. Dee. 20, 1788. 

ii Wilhelmina Wemyss, b. Oct. 25, 1791, m. to Hon. James 

Delap Harris, 
iii Letitia Frances, m. to Stephen Wiggins of St. John, N. B., 

and had a son, George Wiggins, who m. twice and d. 

in Windsor, N. S. 
iv William, b. Jan. 1, 1795, bap. in St. John's Parish, Corn- 
wallis, July 21, 1798. 
V William Charles, b. Nov. 29, 1798, bap. May 1, 1801, m. 

Maria, dau. of Oliver and Sarah Alice (Allison) 

Cogswell, b. Nov. 15, 1821, and d. in April, 1873. 

They and their children are buried at Oak Grove 

Cemetery, Kentville. Mr. CampbeU was High Sher- 

iff of the county for many years, 
vi Sarah Jane, apparently twin with William Charles, also 

bap. May 1, 1801. She was m. to William St. Andrew 

McKay, of St. John, N. B. 
vii Ruth Ascough, bap. at 3 weeks old, Jan. 13, 1804. 
viii Thomas B., b. Dec. 9, 1805, m. May 14, 1837, Rebecca, dau. 

of Oliver and Sarah Alice (Allison) Cogswell, b. 

Mar. 6, 1817, and d. s. p. April 12, 1870. Mr. 

Campbell was Judge of Probate and Registrar of 

Deeds for many years. 



THE CHASE FAMILY 

The Chase family of King's County was founded by Stephen^, son 
of Joseph and Sarah (Sherman) Chase, of R. I., and his two sons, 
Joseph^ and Jethro^ aU of whom were grantees in Cornwallis.. 
Stephen Chase was a descendant of William Chase, who with his 



FAMILY SKETCHES 599 

wife Mary, and his eldest son, William, came to Roxbury, Mass., in 
1630, but later removed to Yarmouth, Barnstable county. He m. 
four times, (1) Sept. 11, 1728, Esther Bufangton, (2) Dec. 20, 1751, 
Bashaby Stafford, (3) Aug. 2, 1769, Abigail Porter, (4) Jan. 28, 
1776, Nanc}'- Bushnell, and came, it is believed, directly from Swan- 
sea, Mass., to Cornwallis. The Chase family was perhaps the only 
King's county family that before coming to Nova Scotia had be- 
longed to the Society of Friends. By his first wife, Stephen Chase 
had 11 children, by his third wife, 2 children and by his fourth wife 
2, Of the sons by his first wife we shall follow Joseph and Jethro ; 
the sons by his fourth wife were William and Job. All four of these 
sons m. and had families in King's County. An imperfect Chase 
Genealogy was published in Fall River, Mass., in 1874, in which, as 
on the Town Book of Cornwallis, will be found many records of the 
Chase and allied families which cannot be given here. The family 
has always been a highly influential one in the county, both in its 
own name and in its alliances with other families. It is hoped that 
some member of it may feel impelled by the scantiness of the record 
here given soon to compile a complete Nova Scotia Chase Genealogy. 

Josephs Chase, (Stephen^,) b. April 13, 1742, m. Oct. 21, 1764 (by 
Rev. Joseph Bennett), Hannah, dau. of Joshua Ells, who d. April 17, 
1815. They had children : Sarah, b. Aug. 15, 1766, m. Dec. 22, 1790, 
to Andrew Newcomb, Jr. ; Esther, b. Dec. 30, 1767, m. June 6, 1790, 
to John Burbidge ; Hannah, b. June 7, 1769, m. June 3, 1788, to Mar- 
chant Rand; Joshua, b. March 30, 1771, m. Aug. 26, 1799, Esther, 
dau. of Pern and Sarah Terry; Joseph, b. Feb. 22, 1774, m. Mary 
Hamilton; David, b. Oct. 22, 1774, m. Jan. 17, 1799, Eunice, dau. of 
Solomon and Lois Crocker ; Mary, b. Dec. 7, 1776, m. June 12, 1798, 
to Ezekiel Kinsman ; Abigail, b. May 24, 1778, m. Oct. 11, 1800, to 
Amos Kinsman; Mehitable, b. March 25, 1780, d. unm., March 4, 
1845. 

Jethro2 Chase, (Stepheni,) b. April 13, 1746, m. Dec. 15, 1768, 
Dorothy, dau, of Reuben and Nem Cone. Children : Stephen, b. and d. 
in 1769; Stephen, b. Nov. 22, 1770, m. Jan. 7, 17(96, Alice Wood- 



600 KING'S COUNTY 

worth; Esther, b. Aug. 15, 1772, m. March 2, 1803, to Abijah Pear- 
son; Reuben, b. Aug. 12, 1774; John, b. Sept. 10, 1776; Hannah, b. 
and d. in 1778; Benjamin, b. Aug. 26, 1780; Experience, b. and d. in 
1782; Samuel, b. and d. in 1782; Dorothy, b. Nov. 22, 1783, m. to 
James Kinsman ; Jethro, b. Nov. 12, 1786, 

William2 Chase, (Stephen^,) b. about 1777, m. Sept. 14, 1802, 
Sarah Jess. Children: Eliza, b. June 22, 1803; William, b. Feb. 6, 
1805 ; Rev. David, b. Nov. 4, 1806 ; Sarah, b. June 29, 1809 ; George, 
b. March 23, 1811 ; Martha, b. Nov. 23, 1812 ; John P., b. Feb. 22, 
1815; Mary Alice, b. Dee. 21, 1818; Hannah, b. Dec. 27, 1821; Elias, 
b. Nov. 7, 1823. 

^ Job2 Chase, (Stepheni,) b. Jan. 21, 1782, m. July 7, 1810, Ann 
Jess. Children: Job, Jr., b. Jan. 23, 1811, d. young; Mary Ann, b. 
Aug. 30, 1814; James S., b. July 20, 1816; Ruth A., b. Aug. 18, 
1817 ; Rachel, b. Dec. 19, 1819 ; Job Stephen, b. July 26, 1823. 



THE CHIPMAN FAMILY. 

From the arrival in King's County of the New England planters, 
the Chipman family has occupied here a foremost place. The 
founder of the family in King's County was Handley Chipman, a 
man of strong character and great intelligence, who left more 
literary remains than any one of the N. E. planters. These remains 
consist chiefly of journals and prayers. Handley Chipman 's 
father was Hon. John Chipman, Judge of the Court 
of Common Pleas, of Mass., b. in Barnstable, Mass., 
March 3, 1670, and his mother, his father's second wife, Elizabeth 
Pope, dau. of Thomas Handley. His grandparents were John Chip- 
man, who came from near Dorchester, Eng., in 1631, and in 1646, 
m. Hope, second dau. of John and Elizabeth (Tillie) Howland, of 
the Mayflower, 

Handley Chipman, the Cornwallis grantee, was b. in Sand- 
wich, Mass., Aug. 31, 1717, and m. (1) April 24, 1740, Jean, 
dau. of Col. Jonathan and Margaret (Holmes) Allen, of Martha's 



FAMILY SKETCHES 601 

Vineyard, (2) in Cornwallis, Dee. 14, 1775, Nancy, dau, of Stephen 
and Elizabeth (Clark) Post, formerly of Saybrook, Conn., a sister of 
Mrs. Benjamin Belcher, of Cornwallis. From Mass., Handley Chip- 
man removed to Newport, R. I., and in 1761, came to Cornwallis. In 
1753 he was a Deputy to the R. I. General Assembly ; in Cornwallis 
he was a Justice of the Peace, and the first Judge of Probate for the 
county. He d. May 27, 1799. His first wife, b. Aug. 28, 1722, d. 
April 5, 1775. Handley Chipman was a second cousin of Ward 
Chipman, of Mass., the Loyalist, father of Hon. Ward Chipman, 
Chief Justice of New Brunswick. Children by first marriage (all 
bom in Newport, R. I.) : 

i Elizabeth, b. Feb. 19, 1741, m. to William Dexter, of 
Cranston, R. I, and d. Feb. 9, 1764. 

ii John, b. July 21, 1742, d. unm. 

iii Margaret, b. July 17, 1743, m. in 1760, to Richard Bacon, 
of Providence, R. I., and d. May 4, 1761. 

iv John, M. P. P., b. Dec. 18, 1744, d. April 29, 1836. He 
was a J. P., and Judge of the Inferior Court in King's 
County. He m. Nov. 15, 1769, Eunice, dau. of Major 
Charles and Miriam (Ingersoll) Dickson, of Horton, 
and had 15 children, one of whom, Eunice, b. June 
30, 1778, was m. to David Whidden; another Jared 
Ingersoll, b. May 22, 1788, who m. in Halifax, Mary 
Sawyer, was a Barrister, Sheriff of Halifax county, 
and a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for 
the Province. 

V. Catharine, b. Nov. 11, 1746, m. in 1764, to Major John 
Beckwith, Jr., of Cornwallis. 

vi Handley, Jr., b. Oct. 9, 1748, ''d. next month." 

vii Rebecca, b. Nov. 21, 1750, m. in 1767, to Samuel Beck- 
with, Jr. 

viii Rev. Thomas Handley, b. Jan. 17, 1756, m. (1), in 1776, 
in Cornwallis, Mary, only dau. of John Huston, of 
Cornwallis, (2) in Oct., 1786, Jane Harding, of Bos- 
ton, (3) in Sept., 1821, Mary Briggs, of Portland, 
Me., (4) Mary Dunn. By his 1st wife, he had 4 
chldren, by his 2nd, 6. He was long pastor of the 
Baptist Church at Annapolis, N. S. 

ix William Allen, b. Nov. 8, 1757, d. Dec. 28, 1846. He 
lived in Cornwallis, was a member of the legislature, 
and a Judge of the Inferior Court. He m. Nov. 20, 



602 KING'S COUNTY 

1777, Ann, dan. of Samuel Osborn of St. John, N. B., 
and d. aged about 85. Children: Rebecca, b. June 
28, 1779, m. April 28, 1795, to John Barnaby; Rev. 
William, b. Nov. 29, 1781, m. (1) Feb. 24, 1803, 
Mary McGowan Dickie, (2) his 1st cousin, Eliza Ann, 
dau. of Holmes Chipman, and had in all 21 children, 
of whom William Henry Chipman, M. P., was the 
3rd, and Judge John Pryor Chipman, was the young- 
est but one; Handley, b. July 25, 1784; Sarah, b. 
Aug. 10, 1788, m. to James R. Lovett; Hon. Samuel, 
b. Oct. 18, 1790, m. (1) May 16, 1815, Elizabeth Ges- 
ner, (2) Jessie Hardy; Ann, b. Dec. 16, 1795, m. to 
Thomas Lovett. 

X Anthony, b. about 1759, in Newport, in 1783, m. Anna 
Lurvey, and had 2 children. 

xi Nancy, b. Oct. 6, 1776, m. to Capt. Abner Morse. 

Children by second marriage : 

xii Holmes, b. Jan. 17, 1777, m. Nov, 10, 1798, Elizabeth 
dau. of Israel Andrews, of Hants county, b. in 1777, 
and had 11 children, of whom Winckworth Allen, 
b. in 1804, a well known and highly respected inhab- 
itant of Kentville, was one ; Eliza Ann, b. July 13, 
1807, m. in 1827, to Rev. William Chipman, and was 
mother of Judge John Pryor Chipman, was another, 
and Zachariah, b. April 18, 1814, a well known resi- 
dent of St. Stephen, N. B., a third, Holmes Chipman 
was prominent in the militia, and was president of 
the King's County Agricultural Society. 

xiii Zachariah, b. Mar. 20, 1779, m. Nov. 29, 1800, Abigail, 
dau. of James and Mary Brown and widow of 
Joseph Shaw, and had 6 children. He lived in Anna- 
polis, and in Yarmouth. 

xiv Major, b. Dec. 4, 1780, m. Nov. 25, 1802, Eliza, dau. of 
Deacon William Bishop, of Horton, b. Aug. 12, 1781, 
and had 4 children. The eldest of whom was Sam- 
uel Bishop Chipman, M. P. P. This family lived 
at Lawrencetown, Annapolis county. 

XV Stephen, b. June 28, 1784, in Comwallis, d. May 5, 1849. 
He m. (1) Aug. 5, 1804, Nancy Tupper, (2) Oct. 13, 
1847, Jane Tupper, and had in all 4 children. He 
was Town Clerk for Annapolis. 

William Henry* Chipman, M. P. (Rev. William^, William Allen^, 
Handleyi), b. in Annapolis, Nov. 3, 1807, m. Jan. 6, 1831, Sophia 



FAMILY SKETCHES 603 

Araminta, dau. of James and Elizabeth (Beckwith) Cogswell, b. 
Oct. 5, 1807, d. June 11, 1878. He d. in Ottawa, April 10, 1870. 
Children : 

i Col. Leverett de Veber, m. Nancy, dau. of Stephen Har- 
rington Moore, Barrister, and had children: Wilford 
Henry, m. Grace Hunnewell Eaton, daughter of 
John Kufus and Josephine (Hamilton) Eaton, and 
has sons: Leverett de Veber, Jr., and Eeginald 
Henry; Lavinia Moore, m. to Frederick Dimoek; 
Ethel Sophia, m. to Barclay Webster, Barrister, 
M. P. P., and had one son, Lieut. Beverley Barclay- 
Webster, of the Imperial Army; Anna Leontine; 
Lena Evangeline, m. to William Murray, youngest 
son of Blair and Sarah (Cogswell) Botsford, of Dor- 
chester, N. B. 

ii James Oliver, d. young. 

iii John Ross, m. Sarah Eliza, daughter of Richard and Tar- 
nar (Troop) Starr, and has children. 

iv Elizabeth, m. to Rev. Robert M. Sommerville, D. D., of New 
York City. 

V Frederick W., m. Agnes Eliza, daughter of Rev. John and 
and Eliza Ann (Davidson) Struthers, and had 
children. 

vi Mary A., m. to Thomas Dunlop, of Pietou county, and 
has children. 

vii Henry, M. D., one of the most important physicians in the 
county. He has married three times. 

viii Anna Sophia, m. as his 1st wife to Joseph Christopher 
Starr, and has one son. 

ix Reginald W., M. D., long settled as physician in Chelsea, 
Mass. He has m. twice. 

In "Personal Sketches" will be found brief biographies of Hon. 
Samuel Chipman, William Henry Chipman, M. P., and others. Of 
living persons of distinction descended from this family, are Col. Lev- 
erett de Veber Chipman, eldest son of Wm. Henry Chip^nan, M. P., 
one of the most prominent persons in the county, for many years 
the holder of important public offices ; His Honor, Judge John Pryor 
Chipman ; and Holmes Samuel Chipman, brother of Judge John Pryor 
Chipman. Of these representatives of the family. His Honor, Judge 
John Pryor Chipman, LL.B., son of Rev. William and Eliza Ann 



604 KING'S COUNTY 

(Chipman) Chipman, studied at the Kentville grammar schools, at 
Horton Academy and Acadia University, and in June, 1869, at the 
Harvard Law School. In October, 1869, he was called to the Nova 
Scotia bar, and thereafter he practised at Kentville, having as part- 
ners, successively, Thomas William Harris, Q. C, Kobert L, Borden, 
K. a, Edmund L. Newcomb, K. C, and Willard P. Shaffner. On the 
incorporation of Kentville he became first Stipendiary Magistrate 
and Recorder for two terms ; also the second Mayor. He was created a 
Q. C. in 1884, and was raised to the bench as Judge of the County 
Court for District No. 4, of the Province, June 18, 1890. He mar- 
ried June 10, 1875, Susan Mary, dau. of Robert and Mary Brown of 
Halifax, and has had nine children: Alice Kathleen, m. to Chester 
William Laing; Frank Beverley Allen, m. Isabel Margaret Chis- 
holm; Arthur Halliburton; Nora Tillinghast; Robert Winckworth; 
Harold Cassels ; Beatrice Mary ; Jack Holmes ; Murray Reginald. 

Holmes Samuel Chipman, youngest son of Rev. William and Eliza 
Ann (Chipman) Chipman, was b, Dec. 22, 1850, and in 1868, went to 
Detroit, Mich. In 1869 he was engaged in the shipping of wheat 
in Duluth, but in 1870, being then in California he went with Count 
Ito, premier of Japan, to the Orient. There he introduced the mod- 
ern system of printing. He made the first type, printed the first 
newspaper in Japanese, and established a government printing of- 
fice and paper mill. He remained in Japan until 1876, when he 
removed to Australia and entered mercantile life. He married in 

1882, Julia A. Tortat, and has one son, Howard Holmes, b. May 8, 

1883. 

THE CLARK OR CLARKE FAMILY 

The well known Clark or Clarke family of Cornwallis was 
founded in Cornwallis by Asa^ Clark, son of Noah and Sarah 
(Taintor) Clark, of Colchester, Conn., (married June 10, 1719) 
whose father died probably in 1749. May 7, 1750, Asa Clark's 
mother was formally appointed her son's guardian, but before July 
2, 1757, Asa married Sarah, daughter of Capt. John and Lydia 
(Kellogg) Hopson, of Colchester, b. Jan. 29, 1737. The Hopson 



FAMILY SKETCHES 605 

family was a Rhode Island family, but Captain John Hopson, son of 
John and Sarah Hopson, was b. at Colchester, Conn., Nov. 12, 1707, 
and m. May 28, 1730, Lydia, dau. of Nathaniel and Margaret Kel- 
logg, b. in Colchester, May 29, 1710. Capt. John Hopson d. Aug. 
6, 1751, and his widow was m. (2) to Henry Bliss of Lebanon. She 
d. March 31, 1761. See N. E. Hist, and Gen. Register, Vols. 42, 43, 
48, and Colchester Vital Records. The immediate ancestry of Asa 
Clark was at folloM^s: Daniel Clark, Jr., son of Hon. Daniel and 
Mary (Newberry) Clark of Hartford, Conn., was born in Hartford, 
where the Clark family was a prominent one, Apr. 5. 1654. He m. 
Hannah Pratt of Hartford, and removed to Colchester, where with 
other children he had probably a son, Noah, born, who m., as we 
have seen, in Colchester, Sarah Taintor. An important article on the 
Clark or Clarke family will be in the 3rd volume of Professor and 
Mrs. Edward E. Salisbury's Family Histories and Genealogies. 

Asa2 Clark, son of Noah and Sarah (Taintor) Clark, b. in Col- 
chester, Conn., m. Sarah, dau. of Capt. John and Lydia (Kellogg) 
Hopson, of Colchester, and it is said removed from Conn., first to 
Cobequid or Portapique, Nova Scotia. Dec. 31, 1764, however, 
he received a grant of land in Cornwallis, where he died on the 
''Clark homestead," May 19, 1819, his will having been made June 
19. 1813. His widow died in 1823. Children : 

i Jehiel, b. in Conn., was a master mariner, and for some 

service rendered the city of St. John, N. B., was 
given the freedom of the city in 1796. He was af- 
terwards drowned in crossing the Bay of Fundy. He 
was buried in Wilmot Churchyard, Jan. 5. 1797. 

ii Sarah, b. in Conn, in 1758, d. unm., in Cornwallis in 1830. 

iii Lucy, b. Mar. 15, 1760, m. May 26, 1778, to Asael, son of 
David and Ann Bentlev. 

iv Lydia, b. June 20, 1762. 

V Asa. Jr., b. May 5. 1765, at Cobequid. Either this Asa, 
or an Asa b. in 1774, m. Mary McLelan of Five 
Islands. 

vi Charles, b. Dec. 21, 1767. 

vii Jerusha, b. June 12, 1770. 

viii Jerusha, b. June 11, 1771. 

ix Lavinia, b. Oct. 17. 1773. 



606 KING'S COUNTY 

X Hannah, b. Feb. 25, 1776. 
xi John Hopson, b. July 28, 1778. 

xii Ephraim, b. April 12, 1780, m. Feb. 27, 1811, Rachel, dau. 
of George Robertson. 

Asa2 Clark, Jr., (Asa^) b., it is said, in 1774, m. Mary McLelan of 
Five Islands, N. S., a relative of Hon. Archibald Woodbury Mc- 
Lelan, sometime governor of Nova Scotia. Children : 

i David, b. 1803, moved to La Prairie, Wisconsin, and had 

a son, a 1st Lieut, at the capture of the City of 
Mexico. 

ii Jehiel, b. in 1804. 

iii George, b. in 1808. 

iv John Hopson, b. in 1810, a prominent merchant and ship- 
owner in Canning, N. S., who m. Elizabeth M,, dan. 
of Augustus and Mary (Foster) Tupper, a 1st cousin 
of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles Tupper, Bart., and had 
children: Augustus Tupper, M. D., a leading physi- 
cian in Canon City, Colorado, who m. and has 2 daus. 
living ; Julia, 1st wife of Hon. Sir Frederick Borden, 
K. C. M. G. ; Bessie, 2nd wife of Hon. Sir Frederick 
Borden. 

V, vi Daughters, Mrs. Logan, and Mrs. Kerr. 

In Cornwallis we find also the following record: Elias and Mary 
Clark had children : Joseph, b. Dec. 21, 1769; Thomas, b. April 4, 
1772 ; Martha, b. May 1, 1774. See Supplementary Sketch. 



THE CLEVELAND FAMILY 

Among the early settlers in Horton was Deacon Benjamin^ Cleve- 
land, Jr., son of Benjamin and Ann (Church) Cleveland, of Wind- 
ham, Conn., b. at Windham, Aug. 30, 1733, m. there (1) Feb. 20, 
1754, Mary, dau. of Nathan Alderkin, b. in Windham, Dec. 16, 1735 ; 
(2) at Scotland, Conn., where he returned to marry her, Sarah Hub- 
bard or Hibbard, b. in Norwich or Scotland, Conn. Deacon Ben- 
jamin Cleveland was a 1st cousin of Rev. Aaron Cleveland, who 
graduated at Harvard in 1735, was in Halifax from 1750 to 1754, 
as first minister of the Congregationalist Church there, but in Eng- 
land took Orders in the English Church, then returning to America. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 607 

Bev. Aaron Cleveland, who was an ancestor of the late President 
Grover Cleveland, died at the house of his friend, Benjamin Frank- 
lin, in Philadelphia, Aug. 11, 1757. His wife was a niece of Judge 
Sewall, of Salem, Mass. Deacon Benjamin Cleveland was the 
author of a collection of hymns, many of which have appeared in 
later Baptist compilations of hymns. One of these is the hymn, 

' ' could I find from day to day 
A nearness to my God." 

He was an exemplary Christian and an influential person in Hor- 
ton. It is said that Rev. Henry Alline composed at the death bed of 
his wife, Mary (Elderkin), a hymn entitled, "The Christian's Tri- 
umph Over Death." Children by first marriage: 

i Anne, b. May 2, 1775, m. in Horton to Thomas Pitts, and 
had 4 children. 

ii Roxalena, b. Jan. 23, 1757, m. in Horton to Hugh Pudsey, 
an Englishman, and had 4 children. 

iii Martin Luther, b. Jan. 23, 1759, m. Sept. 2, 1784, Hannah 
Fielding, b. in Yorkshire, Eng., in 1763, and had 9 
children. 

iv Mary, b. May 16, 1761, either in Windham, or in Horton, 
but probably the former, m. in Horton, April 27, 1780, 
to George Johnson, b. in Ellerton, E. Riding of York- 
shire, Eng., Sept. 27, 1749, and had 9 children. 

v Olive, b. Feb. 23, 1763, m. as his 2nd wife, to Cornelius 
Fox, b. in County Cork, Ireland in 1745, d. in Corn- 
wallis, Aug. 29, 1815, and had 4 children. 

vi Enoch, b. Sept. 14, 1765, m. probably at Windsor, N. S., 
Jan. 1, 1795, Isabella, dau. of Isaac Little, and had 6 
children. 

vii Cynthia, b. Nov. 29, 1767, m. in 1795, to John Morse, b. 
in Manchester, Eng., and had 3 children. 

viii Eunice, b. Feb. 25, 1770, m. to John Sangster, b. in Scot- 
land, and had 4 children. 

ix Jerusha, b. Mar. 28, 1773, m. Dee. 25, 1794, to James (son 
of James) Neary, b. in Kilkenny, Ireland, in 1764, 
and had 9 children. 

X Sarah, b. Nov. 16, 1775, m. to William, son of Jonathan 
and Susan (Pyke) Caldwell, and had 7 children. 

xi Rev. Nathan, b. Nov. 10, 1777, m. at Liverpool, N. S., Dia- 
demia Dextor, and had 3 children. Rev. Nathan 
Cleveland was ordained June 29, 1808. 



608 KING'S COUNTY 

xii Aaron, b. May 1, 1780, m. at Gaspereau, June, 1803, Jer- 

usha, dau. of Samuel and Sarah (Witter) Miner, and 

had 9 children. 

The Cleveland Genealogy in 3 vols., published in 1899, gives this 

family and its descendants in other names so minutely that it does 

not seem necessary to give more space to it here. 



THE COOHEAN FAMILY 

James^ and Nancy (Lyons) Cochran, from Ireland, seem to have 

been the founders of the Cochran family in Cornwallis. They had 

a son James, b. in Ireland in 1813, who m. in Cornwallis, Eliza 

Ann, dau. of Abel and Elizabeth (Crawford) English. Children: 

i John, b. May 31, 1843, m. Mary Feader. 

ii James, b. Nov. 30, 1844. 

iii Mary Elizabeth, b. June 15, 1846. 

iv Anna Maria, b. Nov. 9, 1847. 

V Nancy, b. Oct. 29, 1848, m. to Charles W. Burbidge. 

vi Samuel Belding, b. July 31, 1850. 

vii Charles Edwin, b. July 21, 1853. 

viii William Zephaniah, b. Mar. 20, 1855. 

ix Margaret Hoyt, b. Sept. 3, 1856 m. to Henry W. Moffatt. 

X Florence Sophia, b. Jan. 18, 1858. 



THE COFFIN FAMILY 

The King's County branch of the eminent N. E. Coffin family was 
founded by Prince Coffin, son of Thomas and Abigail (Russell) 
Coffin, of Nantucket, Mass., b. in Nantucket, Dec. 2, 1757, came to 
Nova Scotia about 1776. His descent from Tristram Coffin, 
founder of the N. E. family, is Thomas; Micajah and Dorcas (Cole- 
man) ; Joseph and Bethiah (Macy) ; James and Mary (Severance) ; 
Tristram and Dionis (Stevens). Prince Coffin was a 3rd cousin of 
Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, his brother. General John Coffin, and his 
sister Elizabeth, wife of Thomas Amory, the founder of the Boston 
Amory family. Prince Coffin, it is said, was in 1776 captured on a 
whaling voyage, by an English man-of-war, the captain of the ves- 
sel in which he sailed being a Capt. Rand. The whale ship was 



FAMILY SKETCHES 609 

taken into Halifax, from which place Coffin made his way to Corn- 
wallis. After his marriage he lived for a while at Scots Bay, but 
later he moved to Habitant, where he and his wife spent the rest 
of their days. He and his family remained Congregationalists, and 
both are buried in the Congregationalist churchyard at Habitant. 

Prince Coffin, m. in Cornwallis, by Rev. Hugh Graham, Presby- 
terian, Jan. 8, 1788, Experience, dau. of Joshua and Mary Ells. 
Children : 

i David, b. Sept. 17, 1788. 

ii Joshua, b. April 6, 1792, m. Mar. 6, 1815, Elizabeth, dau. 

of Michael Lounsbury. 
iii Abigail, b. Mar. 24, 1793, m. June 13, 1820, to John, son 

of James McKenzie. 
iv Mary, b. Sept. 30, 1795. 
V Abraham, b. May 1, 1797. 
vi Deborah, b. Aug. 6, 1798, m. Nov. 1, 1798, to Abijah 

Athearn, son of John and Tabitha (Rand) Eaton, and 

had 5 children, 
vii Thomas Bartlett, b, Jan. 28, 1801. He seems to have had 

a dau., Deborah, who was m. in Cornwallis, Feb. 13, 

1851, to Charles Uniacke. 
viii John Russell, b. May 6, 1803, m. Jan. 16, 1828, Jane, dau. 

of John and Tabitha (Rand) Eaton, and had 8 

children. 
For early generations of the N. E. Coffin Family, see N. E. Hist. 

and Gren. Register, vol. 24. 



THE COGSWELL FAMILY 

Th Cogswell family of King's County has always ranked among 
the county's foremost families. Like many of the King's county 
planters, its founder, Hezekiahi Cogswell, came from Lebanon 
Conn. Hezekiah Cogswell, son of Samuel and Mrs. Ann (Mason) 
(Denison, widow of John Denison, Jr.) Cogswell, was born in Say- 
brook, Conn., in 1709, and m. about 1730, Susanna Bailey, b. in 
Mansfield, Conn. He settled in Lebanon, and owned the Covenant 
there, Jan. 2, 1732. In 1761 he removed to Cornwallis, where both 
he and his wife d. at an advanced age. Children : 

i Daniel, b. Oct. 12, 1731, d. unm., in Mass., Jan. 30, 1819. 



610 KING'S COUNTY 

ii Ezra, bap,. Mar. 18, 1733, m. Oct. 30, 1760, Elizabeth 
Dewey. 

iii Aaron, m. (1) Susanna Edgarton, (2), Feb, 19, 1778, Ruth 
Parish. 

iv Oliver, m. Dee. 23, 1773, Abigail Ells. 

V Sarah, m. to Nathaniel, son of Benj. and Elizabeth Kins- 
man, b. in Ipswich, Mass., and had 8 children. 

vi Christina, m. Oct. 31, 1771, to John English, and had 12 
children. 

vii Naomi, b. Sept. 16, 1740. 

viii Ann, m. (1) to Capt. Jeremiah Post, and lived in N. H., 
(2) to Lieut. Governor Paul Spooner, M. D., of Ver- 
mont. She had no children. 

ix Diademia, b. June 16, 1742, m. to Jeremiah, son of Samuel 
and Elizabeth (Allen) Dewey, b. Jan. 20, 1738, and 
lived in Conn, and Vermont. 

X Martha, m. to Densmore. 

xi Capt. Mason, b. 1750, m. Lydia Huntington. 

Ezra2 Cogswell (Hezekiahi), bap. Mar. 18, 1733, m. Oct. 30, 1760, 
Elizabeth, dau. of Samuel and Elizabeth (Allen) Dewey, of Leb- 
anon, Conn. He had 10 children, b. in Lebanon, Cornwallis, and 
Chesterfield, Mass., where he and his wife probably died. See Cogs- 
well and Dewey Genealogies. 

Aaron2 Cogswell (Hezekiahi), b. in Lebanon, prob. about 1735, 
m. (1) Susanna Edgarton, b. in Mansfield, Conn., (2) Feb. 19, 1778, 
Ruth, dau. of Solomon Parish. By his 1st marriage, he had chil- 
dren: Elihu, b. Oct. 11, 1759, m. Rebecca Howland; Daniel, m. Oct 
20, 1802, Abigail Newcomb; Aaron, m. Susan Mitchener; Anna, m. 
to Joel Porter; Sarah, m. to Benjamin Stedman, and d. ^. p.; Al- 
lison, m. to Enoch Steadman; Hannah, m. to Edmund Porter. By 
his 2nd marriage he had Susanna, m. to Lemuel Ells ; Ruth, m. to 
Thomas Ells. 

Oliver^ Cogswell (Hezekiah^,) b. in Lebanon, m. Dec. 23, 1773, 
Abigail, dau. of Joshua Ells, who d. about 1840. He d. May 14, 
1783. They had children : Samuel, b. Dec. 29, 1774, m. April 11, 
1805, Emma Loveless, and d. June 6, 1841; Elizabeth, m. to Joseph 
Borden ; Mary, d. young ; John, d. young. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 611 

Capt. Mason- Cogswell (Hezekiah^) b. in Lebanon, in 1750, m. 
Oct. 31, 1771, Lydia, dan. of Ezra Huntington. He lived at Upper 
Dyke Village, on the original Cogswell farm, and was one of the 
most important men in Cornwallis. He was a Presbyterian, and dy- 
ing Dee. 12, 1816, was buried in the Chipman's Corner Burying- 
ground. Children : 

i William, b. in 1772, m. Feb. 26, 1795, Eunice Beckwith, 
b. Aug. 16, 1772, and had 5 children, the 4th of whom, 
Eebecca, b. July 1, 1805, was m. Feb. 19, 1826, to 
Caleb Rand Bill. 

ii Eunice, b. May 8, 1774, m. about 1804, to Charles, son of 
John and Eunice (Dickson) Chipman, b. July 9, 1772, 
d. about 1851. She had 8 children. 

iii Hon. Henry Hezekiah, M. L. C, b. Apr. 12, 1776, m. Isa- 
bella Ellis, and founded the Halifax family. See 
Personal Sketches. 

iv James, b. June 18, 1779, m. (1) in 1802, Elizabeth Beck- 
with, b. in 1782, d. May 22, 1822, (2) March 12, 1823, 
Eunice, dau. of David and Eunice (Wells) Eaton, b. 
Aug. 29, 1798. By his 1st wife had children : Lydia, 

d. young; Eunice Ann, m. Chase; Sophia Ara- 

minta, b. Oct. 5, 1807, m. Jan. 6, 1831, to William 
Henry Chipman, M. P., and d. June 11, 1878 ; Winck- 
worth Allen, b. June 10, 1809, m. Oct. 3, 1833, Caro- 
line E. Barnaby ; John ; James ; Catherine ; Mason E. 
By his 2nd wife he had one child, John Leander, b. 
in 1826, d. in Kentville, Aug. 27, 1871. 

V John, b. Sept. 2*, 1781, m. Mar. 5, 1802, Ruth Ann, dau. 
of Timothy and Huldah (Woodworth) Eaton, b. Oct. 
17, 1784, and had children : Harriet, m. to John Barn- 
aby; Gideon, m. Lucilla S. Perkins; Charlotte, m. (1) 
to James West, (2) to Abraham Porter ; John Ed- 
mund, m. Lydia Bacon. John Cogswell d. Feb. 2, 
1810, and his widow was m. (2) to John George Hil- 
pert. 

vi Ann, b. June 16, 1785, m. Apr. 28, 1810, to Hon. John 
Morton, and d. Mar. 18, 1846. She had 8 children. 
See the Morton Family, and Personal Sketches. 

vii and viii Mason and Gideon, twins, b. Aug. 14, 1786, d. in 
infancy. 

ix Oliver, d. in infancy. 

X Oliver, b. June 16, 1792, m. Jan. 4, 1814, Sarah Alice, dau. 



612 KING'S COUNTY 

of Joseph and Alice (Harding) Allison, and d. July 
28, 1846. 

The Cogswell Genealogy, by Kev. E. 0. Jameson, carries most of 

these families further on. It was published in 1884. 



THE COLDWELL FAMILY 

"William^ Coldwell was born in the south of England in 1695. 
and died at Gaspereau, Horton, Nov. 28, 1802, aged 107. At eigh- 
teen he was impressed into the British Navy, but deserting in 
American waters he married in Stoughton, Mass., Dec. 10, 1734, 
Jane Jordan, b. at Stoughton, June 1, 1717, d. in Horton, May 15, 
1796. In 1712 William Coldwell was in Boston, in 1742 he removed 
to Connecticut. In 1760 or '61 he came to Nova Scotia, and settled 
at Gaspereau. He is buried in Wolfville. Children : 

i William, b. Nov. 20, 1734, m. in 1755, Naomi Noyes, and 
d. in 1756. 

ii John, b. in 1736, m. Jan. 28, 1763, Eleanor, dau. of (prob- 
ably) Joseph Hackett. 

iii Jedediah, b. Sept. 13, 1738, probably d. in Conn. 

iv Jemima, b. June 27, 1740, m. to Nicholas Fielding. 

V- Ebenezer, b. in 1744, m. in ?=.-----;--....-■ -- 

vi Jane, b. July 5, 1742, m. to Nicholas Fielding. 

vii Ebenezer, b. in 1744, m. in 1769, Sarah, dau. of Benjamin 
iV#'<:e-*^*», and d. in 1827. 

viii Jonathan, b. in 1744, m. (1) Catharine Newcomb, (2) Su- 
sanna Pyke, and d. in 1827. 

ix Jacob, b. in 1748, m. Margaret Chapman. 

X Mary, b. in 1750, m. May 1, 1783, as his 2nd wife, to Gilbert 
Forsyth. 

xi Eliphalet, b. in 1752, m. (1) Abigail Sutherland, (2) Mary 
Pyke(?), and d, in Gaspereau, Dec. 24, 1816. 

Of this large family, John became a grantee in Horton and was 
one of the first ten members of the church organized in Horton, 
Oct. 19, 1778, under Eev. Nicholas Pierson. Like others of his fam- 
ily he is buried in Wolfville, where his tombstone may still be seen ; 
Ebenezer ''served under General Montgomery," and finally settled 
at West Bridgewater, Mass. The children of John and Eleanor 



FAMILY SKETCHES 613 

(Hackett) Coldwell were: Sarah, b. Dec. 1, 1763, m., as his 2nd 
wife, to Perez, sou of Brotherton and Betty Martin ; Lucy, b. Nov. 
20, 1765, m. Aug. 6, 1784, to Caleb Benjamin; Eleanor, b. Nov. 10, 
1768, m. to John Graham, b. June 7, 1766; John, b. April 14, 1771, 
m. Jan. 7, 1795, Eliphal, dau. of Peter Bishop; Eunice, b. Nov. 9, 
1773, m. to Timothy Bishop ; Jedediah, b. July 27, 1776 ; Elizabeth, 

b. Sept. 11, 1779, m. to Jackson; Joseph, b. July 27 1782; 

Olive, b. Feb. 14, 1787, m. Sept. 24, 1807, Daniel Bishop; Lavinia 
(twin sister of Olive), m. to Richard Angus, who d. Feb. 24, 1876, 
aged 93. Perez and Sarah (Coldwell) Martin had a dau. Eleanor, 
their eldest child, b. in 1798, m. Nov. 30, 1820, by Rev. Robert 
Norris, to James, son of James and Mrs. Susanna (Tufts) (Levy) 
Brechin, their only child being Perez Martin Brechin, of Cornwallis, 
father of Dr. Wm. Pitt Brechin. 

An important representative of this family is Prof. Albert Ed- 
ward Coldwell, M. A., now Clerk of the Town of Wolfville, a son of 
the late Ebenezer and Mary (Stevens) Coldwell, b. at Gaspereau, 
Sept. 18, 1841, m. Jessie, eldest dau. of Wm. John and Rachel (De- 
Wolf) Higgins, of Wolfville. Prof. Coldwell grad. with honors at 
Acadia University, in 1869, and then became instructor in Mathe- 
matics in Horton Academy. In 1881, he was promoted to the chair 
of Natural Science in Acadia University, and this position he held 
for almost twenty years. He received his M. A. from Acadia in 
1872. In 1883 he studied for a while at Colby University, in Maine, 
and in 1809 took the Summer course in Geology at the Normal 
School of Science in London, Eng. As an educator his influence in 
the Maritime Provinces has been wide. For one term he was on 
the Dominion Geological Survey. He has one son, Frederick. At 
Gaspereau, in 1909, a monument was erected to the memory of Wil- 
liam^ Coldwell by members of the Coldwell family. Persons act- 
ively interested in the monument were, Aubrey E. Coldwell, Col- 
lector of Customs, at Lunenburg, N. S. ; Prof. Albert E. Coldwell, 
of Wolfville; and Dr. Charles T. Caldwell (for part of the family 
spell the name so), of Washington, D. C. 



614 KING'S COUNTY 

THE COLEMAN FAMILY 

Between 1755 and 1765, Michael Coleman came from England to 
Halifax, among his fellow passengers on the voyage being Thomas 
Robinson and his family, of Belfast, or near Belfast, Ireland. The 
Robinson family settled at Saekville, on the Windsor Road, about 
ten miles from Halifax, where representatives of it still live. Young 
Coleman also settled in Saekville, where he m. Frances, dau. of 
Thomas Robinson, and had two sons born : John Robinson, b. Ap^il 
23, 1799; William Joseph, b. in 1804. Of these sons, the latter 
on arriving at manhood removed to the city of Halifax, and after 
a few years established a Fur and Hat store, which subsequently 
became the largest of its kind in Halifax. William Joseph Coleman 
died in 1896, having acquired a considerable estate, and being at 
the time of his death Vice President of the "People's Bank." 

John Ilobinson2 Coleman (Michael^), b. April 23, 1799, in 1820 
settled in Lakeville, King's county, where he resided till his death 
in 1871. He m. March 4, 1824, Rebecca, dau. of William Nesbit, 
b. Jan. 30, 1801. Children : 

i John Nesbit, b Dee. 20, 1824, m, Harriet French of New 
York state. He was a J. P., and in the first Federal 
election after Confederation unsuccessfully contested 
the County of Kings for a seat in the House of Com- 
mons, in the Conservative or "Unionist" interest. He 
d. in Aylesford, in 1899. He had among other chil- 
ren, Charles R., and Harry W. 

ii Elizabeth Ann, b. Sept. 14, 1826, m. in Dec, 1857, to 
Asael Bill Bligh. 

iii Frances Rebecca, b. Dec. 22, 1828, m. to William Noyes of 
Boston. 

iv Thomas Edward, b. Feb. 14, 1831, m. Eliza McKinley, of 
Niagara, Ontario county, and d. in Grafton, King's 
County, in 1900, leaving a son, Frederick, now living 
in Grafton. 

V Marietta, b. Feb. 10, 1833, m. to Henry White, now in the 
United States. 

vi Adelaide, b. Feb. 5, 1835, m. to Hiram Marshall, of Clar- 
ence, Annapolis county, and lived in Lakeville. 

vii Joseph William, b. Oct. 17, 1837, d. unm., in 1905. 

viii James Anderson, M. D., b. Aug. 23, 1839, m. Anna Maria, 
dau. of Henry Bentley and Ina Mary (Barclay) 



FAMILY SKETCHES 615 

Webster, of Kentville. Dr. Coleman graduated in 
medicine at Harvard University, practiced first in 
Shelburne county and then at Grranville Ferry, Anna- 
polis county, and d. at the latter place in 1896. He 
left one child, Edith. 
ix Margaret Blanche, b. in 1841, d. in Lakeville, aged 19. 



THE COMSTOCK FAMILY 

From the Comstock Genealogy we learn that Gideon Comstock, of 
Montville, Conn., m. Hannah, dau. of Samuel and Lydia (Hastings) 
Allen, and had 5 children, b. between 1727 and 1747. May 11, 1756, 
Thomas Turner and John Green gave bond for the administration of 
the estate of Gideon Comstock, deceased. After Gideon Comstock 's 
death his widow was m. to John Bishop. Her youngest Comstock 
son was Ezekiel Comstock, bap. at Montville, Dec. 14, 1747, 

EzeMeP Comstock (Gideon), bap. Dec. 14, 1747, came with his 
mother to Horton, and m. there in 1770, Phebe, dau. of Jehiel and 
Phebe (Cobb) DeWolf, b. at Killingworth, Conn., Dec. 12, 1752. 
His house at New Minas was for many years after his death the 
home of Caleb Forsyth. Children: 

i Hannah, b. Jan. 7 (or 1), 1771, m. to William Bishop. 

ii Nancy, b. Nov. 22, 1772, m. to Chandler Martin. 

iii John, b. Jan. 6 (or 10,) 1774, m. March 21, 1808, Elizabeth 

Van Buskirk. 
iv Olive, b. Dee. 15, 1775, m. Sept. 2, 1802, to Peter Bentley 

Pineo. 
v Lucy, b. Feb. 3, 1778, m. to Gerritt, son of Capt. John and 

Sarah (Bodkin) Cox. 
vi Phebe, b. May 5, 1780. 
vii Anna, m. to George Loomer, 
viii Charlotte, m. to Gibbs Pineo. 
ix Eunice, d. unm. 

X ADen, b. Nov. 12, 1792, m. Anna Brown, and had a son, 
Newton, who m. May 18, 1852, Lydia Elizabeth, dau. 
of David and Jerusha (Rockwell) Eaton. 
xi Rosalinda, b. 1794, m. to Samuel Ells. 



THE CONE FAMILY 

This respectable Connecticut family was represented in Corn- 



616 KING'S COUNTY 

wallis by Reuben Cone, the grantee, son of Stephen and Mary 
(Hnngerford) Cone, of East Haddam, Conn., where he was b. May 
30, 1723. He m. ''Nem" , and had children: 

i Mary, m, April 11, 1766, to John Hoben, to whom she 
bore children: Anna, m, to Jacob Eckerson; John; 
Reuben; Mary; Elizabeth, m. Dec. 16, 1790, to John 
Rand, son of Thomas, b. July 14, 1762, d. Dec. 23, 
1830. 

ii Roxanna, m. to Amasa Bigelow, son of Isaac and Abigail 
Bigelow, and had 10 children. 

iii Dorothy, m. Dec. 15, 1768, to Jethro Chase, son of Stephen 
Chase, and had 10 children: Stephen; Esther, Reu- 
ben; John; Hannah; Benjamin; Experience; Samuel; 
Dorothy; Jethro. 

iv Reuben, Jr., d. in Cornwallis, April 6, 1762, 

V Moses, d. unmarried. 

vi Mehitable, b. in Cornwallis, June 24, 1763. 

vii Reuben, Jr., b. March 12, 1768. 

The Cone Genealogy, published in 1903, does not carry this fam- 
ily on. 



THE CONGDON (CONDON) FAMILY 

Benjamin, James, and Joseph Congdon were grantees in Corn- 
wallis in 1764. Benjamin Congdon m. in North Kingston, R. I., 
Nov. 22, 1722, Elizabeth, daughter of Benoni Sweet, and it is prob- 
able that James and Joseph were his sons. 

James^ Congdon, we know, was his son; he m. in Cornwallis (by 
Handley Chipman, J. P.), July 29, 1763, Sybil, dau. of Edward and 
Zerviah Bill, and had children : Frances, b. Nov. 27, 1763 ; Joshua, 
b. Jan. 10, 1766; Benjamin, b. Sept. 27, 1767; Joseph, b. Oct. 
3, 1769. 

Joseph! Congdon, "son of Benjamin and ("Wall)," m. in North 

Kingston, R. I., Jan. 10, 1754, Mary . North Kingston, R. I. 

Records. Children : 

1 Benjamin, b. Sept. 26, 1754, at North Kingston, R. I., m. 

Ruth Reynolds, 
ii John, b. Jan. 23, 1758. 
iii Elizabeth, b. Oct. 6, 1760. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 617 

iv Mary, b. Nov, 5, 1763, 

V Joseph, b. April 22, 1766, 

vi James, b, Aug. 23, 1768. 

vii William, b. June 11, 1771. 

viii Sarah, b. Jan. 13, 1774. 

ix William, b, Oct, 17, 1776, 

Benjamin^ Congdon (Joseph^, Benjamin^), b. in North Kingston, 
R. I., Sept. 26, 1754, m. in Cornwallis, June 7, 1777 (by Dr. Samuel 
Willoughby, J, P,), Euth, dau. of Benjamin and Ruth Reynolds. 
Children: Mary, b. Oct. 25, 1778; Sarah, b. Mar. 16, 1780; Ruth, 
b. Feb. 19, 1782; Eunice, b. Nov. 22, 1783; Elizabeth, b. Nov. 24, 
1785 ; William, b. Mar. 26, 1788. 



THE COPP FAMILY 

David Copp m. in Horton, in Sept., 1777, Mary Pyke, and had 
children : Catherine, b. Oct. 3, 1778 ; Abigail, b. April 17, 1780. 



THE COX FAMILY 

The Cox family was founded in Cornwallis by Capt. John^ 
Cox, 3rd, son of John, Jr., and Tabitha (Davenport) Cox, b, in Dor- 
chester, Mass,, Aug. 3, 1719. When John, 3rd, was ten years old 
his parents moved from Dorchester to Falmouth, Me., and probably 
there he m. (1) in Sept., 1739 Sarah Proctor. He m. (2), May 20, 
1760, in Christ Church, Boston, Sarah Bodkin, of Boston. In 1764 
he received land in Cornwallis. He d. in Cornwallis, of consump- 
tion, in 1789. By his 1st marriage, Capt. John Cox had 9 children : 
Kezia; Sarah; Dorcas; Karenhappuch (m. to Peter Thomas); Mar- 
tha; Mary; Nancy; Josiah, b. in 1756; Samuel, By his 2nd mar- 
riage he had: Thomas; Capt, Harry; John; Gerritt; Charles; Sam- 
uel; Susanna; Elizabeth, bap, in Christ Church, Boston, May 1, 
1763; Julia, Most, if not all, of his children by his 1st wife re- 
mained in N, E., and from them the Portland Coxes, and other 
Portland families are descended. Of these children, Josiah, b, in 



618 KING'S COUNTY 

1756, was a merchant of prominence in Portland, where he d. July 

20, 1829. He m. Jan. 23, 1785, Susanna, dau. of Joseph and Susanna 
(Pearson) Greenleaf, b. in Newburyport, Mass., Jan. 17, 1768. One 
of the gt.-gt.-grandsons of C'apt. John Cox was Commodore Ed- 
ward Preble, U. S. N. Of Capt. John Cox's children in N. S. the 
following record can be given : 

Thomas^ Cox m. Mar. 12, 1795, Elizabeth, dau. of Joseph Wil- 
liams. Children : Olivia, b. Dec. 25, 1794 ; Julia, b. Jan. 11, 1796 ; 
Joseph, b. Dec. 19, 1798 ; William, b. Mar. 6, 1801 ; Ann, b. Apr. 2, 
1803 ; Thomas, b. Sept. 9, 1806 ; Hannah, b. Mar. 9, 1809 ; Susannah, 
b. May 11, 1811 ; Ruth b. Nov. 11, 1813 ; William, b. Apr. 6, 1816, 
m. Dec. 23, 1843 Alice, dau. of John and Abigail (Rand) Eaton, and 
had 6 children ; Daniel, b. Oct. 6, 1818. 

Capt. Harry2 Cox b. in 1768, m. in Cornwallis, Dec. 19, 1793, by 
Rev. William Twining, Susanna, dau. of David and Deborah 
(White) Eaton, b. June 24, 1769. Children: Paulina, b. Oct. 23, 
1794 ; Harry, Jr., b. Apr. 9, 1796 ; George, b. Jan. 20, 1798, m. Aug. 

21, 1821, Nancy Steadman ; Rev. Samuel, b. Mar. 20, 1800, m. Louisa 
Hamilton, and had a son. Rev. Joseph C. Cox, of the English Church, 
who m. a Miss Akins of Falmouth, Hants county, and lives in Fal- 
mouth ; Arthur, b. April 4, 1802 ; Susannah, b. Mar. 17, 1804 ; John, 
b. July 3, 1806; Judah, b. Sept. 30, 1808; Garland, b. Jan. 13, 1810, 
m. (1) Eliza Kezia Pineo, (2) Mrs. James Coffill, and had sons: Rev. 
George Davenport Cox (deceased). Rev. Joseph H. Cox and Rev. 
E. Obadiah Cox, both in the United States. 

John2 Cox, m. Feb. 4, 1796, Lucy, dau. of Daniel Harris. Chil- 
dren: John, b. May 1, 1798, m. Feb. 12, 1820, Ardelia, dau. of 
Samuel Beckwith; James, b. Nov. 16, 1801, m. Olive, dau. of John 
and Abigail (Rand) Eaton; Sarah Ann, b. Nov. 12, 1803; Josiah, b. 
Dec. 24, 1805 ; Rebecca, b. Nov. 8, 1807 ; Bethany, b. Feb. 12, 1809 ; 
Edward, b. Apr. 11, 1811; Abraham, b. Jan. 1, 1814. 

Gerritt^ Cox, m. Lucy, dau. of Ezekiel Comstock, of Horton, and 
had children, only one of whom, Gerritt Beekman, is known to us. 
The latter m. Jan. 21, 1835, Emma, dau. of John and Abigail (Rand) 
Eaton, b. Feb. 26, 1813, and had children : George ; Rufus ; Leander ; 



FAMILY SKETCHES 619 

Lucy Jane; Naomi; Lucy. Gerritt Beekman Cox d. Oct. 4, 1871, 
aged 68, 

Charles2 Cox, m. Olive . Children : Rachel, b. Aug. 6, 1803 ; 

Gideon, b. Dee. 30, 1804; Orinda, b. Sept. 21, 1806; ''Gordron" and 
"Davason" (?) prob. twins, b. Apr. 28, 1807; Robert, b. Oct. 10, 
1811 ; Mary Jean, b. June 14, 1814 ; Leonard, b. Dec. 13, 1817. 

SamueP Cox, m. Ann , . Children: Sophia, b. Dec. 

15, 1805; Lavinia, b. Oct. 14, 1807; OUvia Mabella, b. Feb. 21, 1810; 
Elijah, b. Aug. 11, 1812; Elias, b. Sept. 5, 1814; Newton, b, Nov. 
28, 1816 ; Carolina, b. July 21, 1819 ; Eunice, b. Oct. 22, 1821. 

Susanna2 Cox was m.. Mar. 25, 1788 to Thomas, son of John and 
Elizabeth Borden, and had 7 children. 

Elizabeth^ Cox, bap. in Boston, May 1, 1763, was m. in Com- 
wallis, April 22, 1788, to John, son of Hans and Esther Hamilton 
(probably nearly related to the Hamiltons of Colchester county. 
See Thomas Miller's "First Settlers of Colchester.") 

Josephs Cox (Thomas2, Capt. Johni,) b. Dec. 19, 1798, m. Mar. 5, 
1828, Mary Bigelow, dau. of Ebenezer and Anne (Rand) Bigelow. 
Children: Ebenezer Thomas, b. Dec. 19, 1828, m. Apr. 17, 1852, 
Emma Duis, and had children — ^Annie, Margaret, Newman, M. D., 
Nancy, Juanita, Flora, Louise; William Aichison, b. Dec. 21, 1830, 
m. Dec. 21, 1853, Almira S. Tolman, and had children — "William 
Frank, Emily, Lilla, Charles; Mary Eliza, b. Apr. 15, 1835; Nancy 
Wellner, b. July 16, 1835, m. May 6, 1859, to Joseph E. Woodworth, 
and had children — ^Frederick, and Franklin; Abraham Bigelow, b. 
May 14, 1838, m. Lorinda McMillan, and had children — Laura, Fred- 
erick, Bertha, Harry, Nellie ; Isaac Newton, b. Dec. 12, 1840, m. Nov. 
18, 1891, Clara Hale (Moore) Johnson, dau, of Richard, M. A., and 
Olivia (Ward) Moore, and had children — Mary, Burnthorne, Rol- 
and; Samuel Bigelow, b. March 31, 1843; Rev. Jacob Whitman, 
Congregationalist clergyman, b. Nov. 28, 1846, m. Sept. 18, 1878, 
Esther Tupper, and had children — Josephine, William, Nellie, Ber- 
tha, Clara Victor; Joseph Piert, b. Aug. 24, 1849, m. May 24, 1871, 
Celia Tupper, and had children — ^Percy, and Harry; Daniel David, 



620 KING'S COUNTY 

b. Jan. 27, 1852, m. Dec. 25, 1875, Annie Borden, and had children — 
Ralph, M. D., Frank, Vera, Percy. 

For records of the family of Joseph^ Cox, the author is indebted to 
Isaac Newton Cox, Esq., of Kingspprt. Dr. Newman Cox, now of 
Baltimore, Md., (son of Ebenezer Thomas*) spent some years in 
Africa as a medical missionary. Ralph B. Cox, M. D. (son of Dan- 
iel David*) is a popular physician in Collinsville, Conn. See for 
the Cox family, "New England Cox Families, No. 9." 



THE CRANE FAMILY 

The Crane family of Eastern Connecticut was founded by Ben- 
jamin Crane, who was in Wethersfield, Conn., as early as 1655. In 
the fourth generation from Benjamin, was Silas^ Crane, son of Jon- 
athan and Mary (Hibbard) Crane, b. April 19, 1723, m. at Nor- 
wich, Conn., Sept. 20, 1742, Lucy Waterman, and removed from 
Lebanon, Conn,, to Horton, where he became a grantee in 1761. 
Children : 

i Silas, Jr., b. Sept. 4, 1743, also a grantee in Horton, but 

it is said, removed to Economy, Colchester county. 
ii Chloe, b. Sept. 24, 745, m. (1), to Samuel Conover, (2) 
to James Noble Shannon, a son of Cutt Shannon, 
and an adopted son of Major James Noble, of Bos- 
ton, 
iii Col. Jonathan, b. in 1750, in Lebanon, Conn., m. in Hor- 
ton, Rebecca Allison, 
iv Theodora, b. in 1752 or '53, m. to Alpheus Morse. 

V Elijah, b. . 

Col. Jonathan^ Crane (Silas^), b. in 1750, m. in Horton, Jan. 31, 
1771, Rebecca, eldest dau. of Joseph and Alice Allison, b. in Ire- 
land in 1751. Children: 

i Ann, b. Nov. 25, 1772, d. unm. 
ii Joseph, b. Jan. 8, 1776, d. unm. 

iii Jonathan, b. Apr. 22, 1779, m. Mary Ann Morse and set- 
tled in Aylesford, 
iv Major James Noble, b. July 6, 1782, m. Oct. 17, 1815, 
Louisa Charlotte Avery. 

V Nancy, m. to Sherman Denison. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 621 

vi William, b. Feb. 15, 1785, m. (1), Feb. 2, 1813, Susan Dix- 
on Roach, and settled in Saekville, N. B., (2) in 1838, 
in England, Eliza Wood. 

vii Silas Hibbert, b. Oct. 17, 1787, m. Ann Chandler, and lived 
at Economy, Colchester county. 

viii Rebecca, b. May 12, 1791, m. to Samuel Black, of Halifax. 

Elijahs Crane, (Silas^) m. Dec. 30, 1777, Miriam Lockhart, who 
d. at Aylesford, Dec. 24, 1822. Children born in Horton: 

i Lucy, b. Nov. 3, 1778. 

ii Miriam, b. July 30, 1780. 

iii Sarah, b. Mar. 15, 1782. 
Children born in Aylesford: 

iv Joseph, b. Dec. 28, 1791. 

V Robert Hibbert, b. Apr. 9, 1793. 
vi Rebecca, b. Oct. 19, 1798. 

vii Jonathan, b. Aug. 11, 1799. 

Jonathan^ Crane (Col. Jonathan^ Sliasi) b. April 22, 1779, m. 

Nov. 19, 1823, Mary Ann Morse. Children : 

i Maria Chipman, b. Oct. 17, 1824. 

11 Charles Aynor, b. June 19, 1826. 

Hi George Canning, b. Aug. 26, 1827. 

iv Albert Desbrisay, b. June 5, 1829. 

V Laura Jane, b. July 17, 1831. 
vi Judson, b. Apr. 6, 1832. 

vii Mary Amelia, b. Sept. 6, 1834. 
viii Jonathan, 3rd, b. Apr. 6, 1837. 

Major James Noble^ Crane (Col. Jonathan^, Silas^), b. July 6, 

1782, m. Oct. 17, 1815, Charlotte Louisa Avery, b. July 6, 1792, 

He d. Aug. 12, 1868, aged 86. She d. Oct. 3, 1878. Children: 

1 Mary Avery, b. Oct. 10, 1816. 

ii Rebecca Allison, b. Dec. 16, 1817. 

iii Jonathan, b. Dee. 29, 1818. 

iv Matilda, b. Mar. 22, 1820. 

V Sarah, b. June 18, 1821. 

vi Samuel Leonard, M. D., b. . 

Of this family, Rebecca Allison was m, (1) to A. F. Sawers, M. D., 
(2) Sept. 8, 1855, to George Herbert Starr, Banker, of Halifax. 
Samuel Leonard, M. D., was Surgeon General of the Forces in the 
British West Indies. 



622 KING'S COUNTY 

Josephs Crane (Elijah2, Silasi), b. Dee. 28, 1791, m. Feb. 24, 

1813 (Eev. Eobert Norris officiating), Lavinia, eldest dau. of Elias 

Graves, of Aylesford. Children: 

i Hibbert Waterman, b. Dec. 31, 1814. 

ii Elias James, b. Feb. 18, 1816, d. July 31, 1816. 

iii Robert Elijah, b. Aug. 10, 1817. 

iv Miriam Susanna, b. Oct, 19, 1819. 

V Rebecca Ann, b. Feb. 3, 1822. 

vi Elizabeth Matilda, b. June 10, 1824. 

vii Lavinia Salome, b. Feb. 9, 1827. 

viii William Henry, b. June 8, 1829. 

ix Joseph Douglas, b. June 11, 1831. 

(From the Aylesford Town Book.) 



THE CURRY FAMILY 

Concerning this family we have very little information. Wil- 
liam Curry died in Horton, July 13, 1801. His son Robert m., 
Jan. 12, 1815, Desiah Fitch. A Richard Curry (probably his son), 
m. Oct. 7, 1793, Rachel Bacon. A Jacob Curry m. Jan. 9, 1822, 
Eliza Rathbun. These three men have families recorded on the 
Horton Town Book. 



THE DARROW FAMILY 

Jonathan Darrow, a grantee in Horton, in 1766, who probably 
received the land on which the Central portion of the town of Kent- 
ville stands, was of a well known New London, Conn., family. He 
was perhaps a son of Christopher and Elizabeth (Packer) Darrow, 
of New London, but of this we are not sure. Very soon after 
receiving his grant in Horton he sold his land and removed to 
Liverpool, Queen's county. He had a son, lehabod, who m. a dau. 
of John Lewin, one of the proprietors in the Liverpool township 
grant of 1764. In James F. More's very brief "History of Queen's 
Co.," pp. 145-9, some facts are given apparently concerning Icha- 
bod's descendants. Research in Queen's County would probably 
reveal much more concerning the Darrow family. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 623 

THE DAVIDSON OR DAVISON FAMILY 

The Davidson or Davison family in N, E. was founded by Nich- 
olas Davidson, b. in England in 1611, V7ho came to Charlestown, 
Mass., in 1639, as agent for Matthew Cradock, of London, a noted 
merchant who had interests in Boston. A grandson of Nicholas, 
Peter Davidson, settled in Preston, Conn., and so originated the 
family of which the Nova Scotia family is a branch. 

Andrew! Davidson, the Horton grantee, was the eldest son of 
Thomas and Lydia (Herrick) Davidson, of Promfret, Conn., and was 
b. in Preston, Conn., June 17, 1727. He m. Eunice Kimball, and d. 
in Horton, Feb. 15, 1784. Children: 

i Samuel (probably a son) m. Oct. 29, 1778, Abigail Eng- 
lish, 2nd, and had children: John, b. Ap^. 6, 1779; 
Sarah, b. Mar. 26, 1781 ; Augustus, b. Jan. 24, 1783. 

ii Thomas, b. in 1753, m. Sept. 8, 1785, Deborah Rogers. 

iii Andrew (probably a son), m. Rachel, 3rd, dau. of David 
Sherman Denison, b. Oct. 22, 1758. 

iv Asa, b. in 1756, m. Prudence Denison. 

V Anna, b. June 11, 1762, m. to Samuel Hamilton (Jonathan, 

Gabriel, David), 
vi John, b. Nov. 20, 1765, went to Annapolis, Maryland, 
vii Nathan, b. May 9, 1768. 

viii Sabra, b. June 17, 1771, m. in Dec, 1793, to Elihu Wood- 
worth, b. in Horton, May 17, 1771. 
ix Daniel, b. Nov. 20, 1774. 
Asa2 Davidson (Andrew^), b. in 1756, m. April 30, 1782, Prudence, 
dau. of David Sherman and Sarah (Fox) Denison, b. Jan. 8, 1757. 
Children : 

i Joshua, b. Mar. 4, 1783. 

ii Rachel, b. Mar. 12, 1784, m. (1) to John R. Angus, (2) to 

Asa Chesley. 
iii David, b. in 1786, m. Jan. 6, 1813, Hepzibah Marchant. 
iv Samuel, b. in 1788, m. Eleanor Doran. 

V Eunice. 

Facts for a fuller sketch of this important family are not at 
hand, but two living members of it must be especially noticed here. 
These are: Professor Harold Sidney Davidson, Ph. D., Leipzig, 
1906, b. in Wolfville in 1873, and now of Columbia University, New 
York; and G. Aubrey Davidson, son of George Davidson, formerly 



624 KING'S COUNTY 

of Kentville, who is now Prest. of the Southern Trust and Savings 
Bank and of the Chamber of Commerce in San Diego, California, 
U. S. A. 

THE DE BLOIS FAMILY 

The De Blois family of Nova Scotia was founded in Halifax by 
George De Blois, son of George and Elizabeth, of Oxford, Eng- 
land, born in Oxford, Mar. 6, 1739, He was a cousin of G-ilbert 
and Lewis De Blois of Boston, who were Loyalists and died in Eng- 
land, and had in Newport, R. I., a brother, Stephen, and a sister, 
Mary. George De Blois came from England to Boston in 1761, 
and on Christmas Day, 1771, married in King's Chapel, Sarah, 
daughter of his 1st cousin, Lewis De Blois and his wife Elizabeth 
(Jenkins). Shortly after he came to America he settled in Salem, 
Mass., where he was connected in business (See Essex Institute 
Collections) with Gilbert, Lewis, Stephen, George, and George, Jr., 
De Blois. On the outbreak of the Revolution he took the British 
side, addressed Hutchinson and Gage, and April 29, 1775, had 
to flee to Halifax. When he went from Salem he was obliged to 
leave much valuable property behind, but part of this he finally 
recovered. His companions in his flight to Halifax were Mrs. Cott- 
nam and family. Dr. John Prince, and Mr, James Grant. From 
Halifax he went to New York, in 1777, but in 1781 he returned 
to Halifax, In 1799 he went to New England for his health and 
on a visit to Newport, R. I., died there, June 18, 1799, He was 
buried in Trinity Churchyard, and there his tombstone remains. 
Mrs, De Blois died in Halifax, at the house of her son, Stephen 
Wastie, Dec. 25, 1827. Children : 

1 Elizabeth, b. Nov. 20, bap. Nov. 22, 1772, in Salem, m, 
in Halifax, Sept, 16, 1802, to Lieut. William Des- 
pard, 7th Royal Fusiliers, 

ii Sarah, b, Aug. 18, bap, Aug, 28, m, in Halifax, Sept. 3, 
1800, to Thomas, son of Dr. James and Mary (Mor- 
ris) Boggs, b. in 1771. 

iii Polly, b. June 20, bap. July 22, 1776, in Halifax. 

iv Rebecca, b. Mar, 5, 1778, m. in May, 1811, to Rev. John 
Bartlett, of Marblehead, Mass. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 625 

V Stephen Wastie, b. in New York, Jan. 16, bap, Feb. 13, 
1780, married in Nova Scotia, and had a family, 
facts concerning whom are not at hand. 

vi George Lewis, b. June 17, bap. Aug, 4, 1782, in Halifax, 
m. Amelia, dau. of Moses Grant, of Boston, b. Mar. 
Mar. 2, 1792, d. Aug. 20, 1867. He removed from 
Halifax to Boston in early life, and in the latter 
city became a well known merchant, and had a son 
Stephen Grant De Blois, b. Aug. 1, 1816, d. April 
5, 1888. See New Eng. Hist, and Gen. Reg., vol. 
44, pp. 324, 5. 

vii Lydia Harriet, b. June 19, bap. July 25, 1784, in Halifax, 
m. at Dedham, Mass., Nov. 25, 1805, to Rev. James 
Flint of Bridgewater. 

viii Ann Maria, b. July 19, bap. Aug. 22, 1787, d. unm. in 
Dedham, Oct. 30, 1802. 

ix Francis Edwin, b. Oct. 25, bap. Dec. 20, 1789, in Halifax, 
d. July 27, 1790. 

X William Minet, b. Nov. 10, bap. Dee. 20, 1795, in Hali- 
fax, m. Jane Vermilye Pryor, dau. of John and Sarah 
(Stevens) Pryor, bap, Jan. 19, 1802, who after her 
first husband's death was m, to George "W, Daniel, 
of Neva, W. I, William Minet and Jane (Pryor) 
de Blois had children: Edward Pryor; Rev, Henry, 
clergyman of the English Church, now living at 
Annapolis Royal; William, d, in New York in 1870, 
s. p.', Rev. Stephen William, of whom hereafter 
Lewis George, M. D., of Bridgetown, N, S. ; Sarah 
Jane, m. Sept. 17, 1846, to Lord William Kennedy, 
then Capt, R. A., b. Nov. 30, 1823, 6th child of 
Archibald, Earl of Cassilis, and grandson of Archi- 
bald, 12th Earl of Cassilis and 1st Marquess of Ailsa 
(Lady Kennedy d. Feb. 5, 1875. Lord William d. 
Mar. 5, 1868) ; Emma, m. to Capt. Charles Austen, 
R. N., son of Admiral Sir Charles Austen, R. N., and 
nephew of Jane Austen the novelist; Jane, d. unm. 

Rev. Stephen William^ de Blois (William Minet^, George^), b, in 
Halifax in 1827, m. in Wolfville, Feb. 14, 1855, Mary Sophia, dau. of 
Simon, Jr, and Sophia Henrietta (DeWolf) Fitch, b, June 24, 
1827, and had two children: Henrietta Sophia, b. Dec, 29, 1855, 
d, Aug, 29, 1859 ; Rev, Austen Kennedy, D, D,, Ph. D., b. Dec, 17, 
1866. See Personal Sketches. 



626 KING'S COUNTY 

THE DENISON FAMILY 

Among the most important of the King's County grantees was 

Col. Robert^ Denison, b. in Montville (New London) in 1697, m. 

(1), Oct. 19, 1721, Deborah, dau. of Matthew and Phebe Griswold 

of Lyme, (2) Prudence, dan. of David and Mercy Sherman, of 

New Haven, b. Oct. 20, 1706. He d. in Horton in 1766. Children 

by 1st marriage: 

i Deborah, b. Dec. 9, 1722, m. to Christopher Manwaring. 

ii Robert, b. Mar. 5, 1724, d. young. 

iii Elizabeth, b. Feb. 26, 1725, d. young. 

iv Elizabeth, b. Sept. 10, 1726, m. to Nathan Smith. 

V Daniel, b. in 1727. 

vi Andrew, b. in 1728, m. Mary Thompson. 

vii Mary, b. in 1730, d. young. 

viii Robert, b. and d. in 1732. 

Children by 2nd marriage: 

ix David Sherman, b. Aug., 1734, m. Sarah Fox. 

X Mercy, b. Oct., 1736, d. young. 

xi Robert, b. July 31, 1739, d. young. 

xii Gurdon, b. in 1744, m. Catherine Fitzpatrick. See Per- 
sonal Sketches. 

xiii Samuel, b. in 1746, d. in 1820; he must have m. Oct. 29, 
1778, Abigail English. 

xiv Sarah, m. a Capt. Kennedy. 

XV Eunice, m. to John Lothrop. 

It is from Col. Robert Denison 's sons by his 2nd marriage that 
the King's County family is chiefly descended, several of his chil- 
dren probably never came to Nova Scotia. From his daughter De- 
borah was descended Miss Frances Manwaring Caulkins, b. in 
Apr., 1795, d. in 1871, widely known as an historian and genealo- 
gist, the author of histories of New London, and Norwich, Conn. 
For the Horton Brown descendants of his dau., Eunice (Lothrop), 
see the Brown Families in this book. 

David Sherman^ Denison (Col. Robert^) b. in Montville, Conn., 
in August 1734, m. there about 1752, Sarah, dau. of Samuel and 
Abigail (Harris) Fox, b. Apr. 16, 1732. He d. in Horton, in 1796, 
aged 62, she d. in 1818. Children : 



FAMILY SKETCHES 627 

i Abigail, b. Mar. 9, 1753, m. to the Eev. Dr. John Martin, 
formerly a chaplain in the British Army, who lived 
at Sussex Vale, N. B. She was the mother of Miss 
Rachel Martin, who once taught a young ladies' 
school in Kentville. 

ii David, b. Jan. 1, 1755, m. Milcah Palmer, and had 7 
children born in N. S. His 2nd dau., Sarah, b. in 
1792, was m. to Charles Randall. 

iii Prudence, b. Jan. 8, 1757, m. Apr. 30, 1782, to Asa Dav- 
ison, and had 3 children: Rachel, b. Mar. 12, 1784, 
m. (1) to John R. Angus, to whom she bore, Asa 
Samuel, and Mary Jane, (2), to Asa Chesley; David; 
Samuel. 

iv Rachel, b. Oct. 22, 1758, m. to Andrew Davison. 

V Samuel, b. Oct. 24, 1760, m. in 1790, Mary Gallup, and 
had children: Rebecca, b. in 1792, m. in 1833, +o 
John Mitchell; Wm. Antil, b. in 1794, m. Mary Jane 
Angus; Samuel, b. in 1797, m. Susan Pineo; Mary, 
b. in 1799, d. unm. ; Abigail, b. Apr. 20, 1801, m. (1) 

to Willett, (2) June 20, 1855, to Samuel Starr; 

Maria, b. Apr. 21, 1803, m. to Asa Samuel Angus; 
Eliza, b. in 1808, d. unm. in 1875. [Mary Gallup, 
mentioned above was no doubt of the Connecticut 
Gallup family, but she was not known to the author 
of the Gallup Genealogy. One is suspicious that 
she was a dau. of Thomas Prentice and Prudence 
(Allyn) Gallup, of Groton, Conn. See the Gallup 
Genealogy, p. 47. Her father may have been a Loy- 
alist] . 

vi Sarah, b. Sept. 18, 1763, m. to Theodosius Palmer. 

vii Eunice, b. Nov. 22, 1766, m. to Amasa Harris, and had 
one child, John, b. in 1797, d. in 1853, m. Sophia, 
sister of Dr. Charles Cottnam Hamilton, and had a 
daughter, Eunice Sophia, m. to Senator Henry A. N. 
Kaulbach, of Lunenburg, N. S. 

viii Col. Sherman, M. P. P., b. June 17, 1769, m. Mar. 12, 
1792, Nancy, dau. of Col. Jonathan and Rebecca (Al- 
lison) Crane, and had children: Sherman David, b. 
June 26, 1797, m. Nancy Hamilton; William, b. Oct. 
8, 1801, d. unm.; Joseph Allison, b. Aug. 15, 
1807, d. in Mississippi; Nancy, b. Jan. 20, 1793, 
m. to John McLatchy; Lavinia, b. Mar. 3, 1795; Re- 
becca, b. Aug. 10, 1799, m. to Edward Bayers; So- 
phia, b. Feb. 10, 1804, m. to Robert Dickson DeWolf, 



628 KING'S COUNTY 

son of Daniel DeWolf; Mary, b. Nov. 30, 1809, d. 
unm. May 7, 1870. 

ix Olive, b. Oct. 7, 1771, m. to Dennis Angus. 

X Lavinia, b. Dee. 3, 1774, m. in 1823, to James Denison, son 
of Andrew^ (Col. Kobert^) and his wife Mary 
(Thompson), b. in 1772, Their children were: 
James A., b. Nov. 22, 1802, m. Louisa Viets; Eliza, b. 
Dec. 6, 1806, m., as his 2nd wife, to Asa Samuel 
Angus; Robert W., b. Mar. 24, 1809, m. Sarah Star- 
ratt, and d. Dec. 23, 1861 ; Julia Lavinia, b. June 24, 
1817, m. as his 1st wife, to Benjamin H. Calkin. 

William Antil* Denison (SamueP, David Sherman^, Col. Robert^), 
b. in 1794, m. Nov. 21, 1832, Mary Jane, dau. of John R. and 
Rachel (Davison) Angus. He lived in Kentville, and died there 
July 7, 1850. Children : 

i Adelaide, b. Dec, 1833. 

ii William Henry, b. April, 1836. 

iii George Albert, b. Nov. 17, 1838, m. Sept. 22, 1864, Mar- 
garet Alice Forsyth, and has had 5 children. 

iv John Harris, b. Jan. 7, 1841, m. (1) June 14, 1865, Phebe 
Bryson and had 4 sons, the eldest of whom is Harry 
Livingston, lawyer at Digby, b. June 1, 1866, 

V Wilhelmina, b. Jan. 7, 1843, d. young, 
vi Lucilla C, b. Dec, 1845, d. young. 

vii Asa Samuel Angus, b. in 1847, d. in 1870. 
viii Mary Jane, b. in 1849, d. in 1861. 

Samuel, Jr.,* Denison (SamueP, David Sherman^, Col. Robert^), 
b. in 1797, m., Jan. 29, 1835, Susan, dau. of Peter Pineo. Children : 

i Samuel Antil, b. Nov. 17, 1835, m. (1) Dec. 29, 1863, 

Emma, eldest dau. of James A. and Louisa (Viets) 

Denison, b. Mar. 16, 1833. They had 4 children. 

Mrs. Denison d. Dec, 13, 1873, and he m. (2) June 

13, 1877, Adelia DeWitt. 
ii Edwin, b. Apr. 29, 1838, m. Dec. 2, 1862, Amelia Davis, 

and had 7 children, 
iii Joseph, M, D., b. Apr. 19, 1841, m. Nov. 21, 1867, Susan 

Woodbury, and had at least 4 children, 
iv Nancy, b. June 14, 1846, m. May 24, 1871, to Horatio T, 

James. 

V Herbert, b. Nov. 5, 1852, is married and lives at Kentville. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 629 

THE DEWEY FAMILY 

Moses^ Dewey in 1764 received land in Cornwallis and settled 
in that town, but for many years the Dewey name has hardly been 
known in Nova Scotia. He was the youngest son of John and 
Mary (Thomas) Dewey, of Lebanon, Conn., and was b. in Lebanon, 
Nov. 10, 1718. He m. at Lebanon, May 12, 1744, Mary, dan. of 
Richard and Mary English, b. Aug. 29, 1720, and had children: 
Moses, Jr., b. Apr. 20, 1745, m. in Cornwallis, June 16, 1779, Rachel 
Smith; Asa, b. July 15, 1748, m. in Cornwallis, Jan. 6, 1772, Sarah, 
dan. of Christopher and Sarah Helms; Hannah, b. Sept. 14, 1753. 
m. July 26, 1772, to Solomon, son of Silas and Sarah (English) 
Woodworth; Anna, b. ab. 1755, m. ab. 1780, to Josiah, son of Silas 
Woodworth ; Abner, b. ab. 1760, drowned July 10, 1766 ; Jonathan, 
twin with Abner, d. Jan. 18, 1762 ; Mary, b. Aug. 2, 1765, in Corn- 
wallis, m, Feb. 22, 1792, to Jonathan, son of Nehemiah and Eliza- 
beth Wood; Abel, b. Aug. 19, 1772. 

Elijah^ Dewey, a son of Samuel and Elizabeth (Allen) Dewey, 
also came to Cornwallis. He was b. in Lebanon, Conn., Jan. 20, 
1736, and m. there (1) Dec. 18, 1760, Mary, dau. of John and 
Mary (Vaughan) Dixon, b. Apr, 16, 1743, d. in Cornwallis, Apr, 

26, 1773. He m. (2) about 1755, Zipporah , and by his 2nd 

marriage had Olive, b. Feb. 9. 1776. 

A Sabra Dewey was m. in Cornwallis, in 1808, to James Longley. 
Dr. Brechin writes in 1896: "All that remains (in Cornwallis) of 
this family is the name of a small stream called Dewey Creek, on 
the place where Mr. Simpkins Walton lived." See the Dewey 
Genealogy, p. 400, 



FIRST DeWOLF FAMILY 

The DeWolf families of King's County, in all respects among the 
most notable families in the county, were transplanted from Con- 
necticut by three important representatives of the Connecticut De- 
Wolfs, Simeon, Nathan, and Jehiel DeWolf. The relationship be- 
tween these men was as follows: Simeon and Jehiel were second 



630 KING'S COUNTY 

cousins; Nathan was a first cousin once removed of Simeon, and a 
second cousin once removed of Jehiel, and Nathan and Simeon 
were brothers-in-law. The relationship of these men to Mark An- 
thony DeWolf, who founded the widely known DeWolf family of 
Bristol, E. I., is as follows: Nathan was a second cousin of Mark 
Anthony, Simeon was a first cousin of Charles of Gaudaloupe, 
Mark Anthony's father, and Jehiel was a second cousin of Charles 
of Gaudaloupe. Of the three Horton grantees, Simeon had pre- 
viously lived in Lyme, Nathan had lived in Saybrook, Jehiel had 
lived in Killingworth. 

Simeon^ DeWolf, of Lyme, Conn., son of Benjamin and Susanna 
(Douglas) DeWolf, was b. in 1719, and m., July 23, 1741, Parnell, 
dau. of John and Lydia (Belden) Kirtland, of Saybrook, Conn., b. 
Jan. 29, 1724, d. in Falmouth, N. S., in Oct., 1807. He d. in Horton, 
in 1780. Children: 

i Elizabeth, b. June 19, 1742, m, to William Andrews, of 
Eastport, Me. She was grandmother of Winck- 
worth Ghipman, of Kentville, and Zachariah Chip- 
man, of St. Stephen, N. B., and gt.-grandmother of 
Judge John Pryor Chipman. 

ii Benjamin, b. Oct. 14, 1744, at Lyme, Conn. (bap. Nov. 
25), m. Mar. 16, 1769, Rachel, dau. of Ephraim Otis, 
M. D., of Seituate, Mass., and founded the chief 
Windsor DeWolf family. 

iii John, m. in Jan., 1774, Susannah Hatch, (2) Elizabeth 
Graham. 

iv James, m. (1) Calkin, (2) Nancy, dau. of Rev. Dr. 

Lawrence, (3) Jane, dau. of Benjamin and Mary 
Parker, of Liverpool, N. S., and had in all, 10 chil- 
dren, of whom Benjamin Otis De Wolfe, of Liverpool, 
N. S., b. Aug. 1, 1810, was the eighth. 

v Charles, b. in 1765, m. Feb. 10, 1786, Sabra, dau. of Israel 
Harding, and had 12 children, among whom were: 
Lucy Ann, b. Nov. 21, 1808, m. to Henry Knowles 
Eaton ; Rebecca Maria, m. as his 2nd wife, to Charles 
Eaton. 

vi Lucy, m. to Jonathan Wilson, of Falmouth, and was the 
mother of Elizabeth, 3rd wife of Winckworth Chip- 
man, of Kentville. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 631 

Benjamin- DeWolf (Simeou^), b. Oct. 14, 1744, m. Mar. 16, 1769, 
Eachel, dau. of Ephraim Otis, M. D., of Scituate, Mass., and sister 
of Susannah Otis, wife of William Haliburton, of Windsor, N. S. 
Children : 

i Sarah Hersej- Otis, b. May 14, 1770, m. to Major Nathan- 
iel Ray Thomas, Jr., son of Hon. Nathaniel Ray and 
Sarah (Deering) Thomas, of Boston, and Halifax; 
and a first cousin of Lady Frances Wentworth. She 
had a dau., Sarah Thomas, the wife of Hon. Judge 
Lewis Morris Wilkins, of N. S. Major Nathaniel 
Ray Thomas, Jr., was Collector of Customs at Wind- 
sor, N. S. 

ii Rachel Hersey, b. Jan. 7, 1772, d. Mar., 1772. 

iii Rachel Otis, b. Feb. 1, 1773, m. Oct. 14, 1802, to Hon. 
James Fraser, M. E, C, b. in Inverness, Scotland, in 
1759, d. at Windsor in 1822, and had children: 
Sarah Rachel Fraser, b. Sept. 7, 1803, m. Oct. 14, 
1824, to Hon. Charles Stepjien Gore, G. C. B., and 
K. H., 3rd son of the 2nd Earl of Arran, and was 
the mother of Eliza Amelia, m. Sept. 20, 1848, to 
William Henry, 19th Earl of Erroll; James De 
Wolf Fraser, b. Feb. 23, 1805, m. May 1, 1839, Cath- 
arine, dau. of Hon. Charles Ramage Prescott, of 
Cornwallis, and d, July 26, 1852; Harriet Amelia 
Fraser, b. Dec. 7, 1806, m. July 28, 1826, Lieut, after- 
ward Col. Dixon, H. M. 81st Regt., and d. Mar. 30, 
1880; Amelia Isabella Fraser, b. Feb. 28, 1808, d. 
May 13. 1837; Frances Mary Fraser, b. Oct. 20, 1809, 
d. Jan. 10, 1827; Benjamin DeWolf Fraser, M. D., a 
well known resident of Windsor, b. Mar. 4, 1812, d. 
July 4, 1888; Catharine Fraser, b. July 16, 1813, m. 
July 16, 1835, to Rev. Thomas G. Suther, afterwards 
Bishop of Aberdeen. She d. in Aberdeen, Apr. 1, 
1880, Mary Hulbert Fraser, b. Feb. 21, 1813, d. Feb. 
7, 1822. 

iv John, b. and d. June 1, 1775. 

V Susanna Isabella, b. June 17, 1776, d. Sept. 25, 1777. 

vi Frances Mary, b. Feb. 23, 1778, d. Nov. 17, 1791. 

vii Isabella Amelia, b. Oct. 2, 1779, m. Aug. 1, 1821, to Capt. 
John McKay, H. M. 27th Regt., and d. s. p. 

viii Harriot Sophia, b. Sept. 8, 1781, m. Sept. 17, 1799, to Rev. 
William Colsell King, Rector of Windsor, N. S., 
and d. July 7, 1807. She had children: William 



632 EING*S COUNTY 

King, b. Oct. 6, 1801; John Otis King; Benjamin 
King, b. May 15, 1806 ; Harry King, b. July 7, 1807. 

John2 DeWolf (Simeoni), m. (1) in Jan., 1774, Susanna Hatch, 

(2), Elizabeth Graham. He owned and lived on property on which 

Acadia College stands. Children by first marriage: 

i Elizabeth, b. in Feb., 1775. 

ii Susanna. 

iii Rachel, m. Dee. 20, 1795, to Peter Strong and was the 

grandmother of Brenton Halliburton Eaton, K. C, 

D. C. L., of Halifax, 
iv Lucy, b. Aug. 1, 1782. 
V Benjamin, 
vi John B., b. in 1786, m., Eliza Rudolph, of Windsor, and 

lived at Liverpool, N. S. 
vii Nancy, b. in 1790, m. Apr. 25, 1809, to William Eaton, Sr. 

(Elisha, David), and was the mother of Clement 

Belcher Eaton, of St. Stephen, N. B. 
viii Lydia, b. Sept. 3, 1791, m. (1) Nov. 12, 1812, to Joseph 

Allison, Jr., (2) in 1821 to Jacomiah Seaman. 
Children by second marriage : 

ix James Isaac. 

X Martha Noble, b. Apr. 22, 1810, m. Jan. 17, 1833, to Job 

Pingree. 
xi Lavinia, m. to James Brown, Sr. 



SECOND DeWOLF FAMILY 

Nathan! DeWolf of Saybrook, Conn., son probably of John 
DeWolf, was b. in 1720, graduated M., A. at Yale College in 1743, 
and engaged in the practice of law. He m. (1), probably about 
1749, Lydia, dau. of John and Lydia (Belden) Kirtland, of Say- 
brook, b. Oct. 28, 1721. He m. (2), Oct. 12, 1770, Mrs. Anna 
(Prentice) Witter. Children by first marriage: 

i Lucilla, m. Nov. 26, 1773, to Lebbeus Harris. See Sketch 

of the Harris Family, 
ii Edward, b. in 1752, m. Sarah, dau. of Nathaniel Brown, 
iii Loran, b. Apr. 7, 1754, M. P. P. for Windsor, N. S., m. 
Mary Fox, of Cornwallis, and had 5 children, the 
eldest of whom, Benjamin, m. a Miss Leavitt of St. 
John, and had a son, James Leavitt DeWolf, b. at 



FAMILY SKETCHES 633 

Windsor, m. Jan. 9, 1838, Margaret Ann, dau. of 
Thomas and Ann (Chipman) Lovett, of Cornwallis, 
and had 10 children. These were: Elizabeth; 
Charles Edgar, Judge of Probate for Hants county; 
Sarah Frances, m. to Rev. Henry Pryor Almon; 
Amelia Isabella; Benjamin Arthur; James Leavitt, 
Jr.; Benjamin Alfred; Perez Morton (of DeWolfe, 
Fiske & Co., of Boston); Annie Agnes ; May Agnes, 
The 2nd child of Loran DeWolf was Phebe, m. to 
Alexander Umphray, father of George Umphray, 
whose family are well known in King's Comity and 
in various parts of the United States. See further on. 
iv Elisha, b. May 5, 1756, m. Margaret Ratchford. 

V Nathan, m. Aug. 27, 1778, Anna Hamilton, and had 6 chil- 

dren. 
Children by second marriage : 

vi Gurdon, b. Sept. 11, 1771, d. Oct. 10, 1772. 

vii Sarah, b. Oct. 10, 1773, m. (1) to Eli Perkins, and became 

the mother of Mrs. Gideon Cogswell, (2) to Joel 

Farnsworth. She d. Dec. 24, 1865. 
viii Jonathan, lost at sea. 

E(iwai'd2 DeWolf (Nathani), b. in 1752, m. Nov. 26, 1773, Sarah, 

dau. of Nathaniel Brown and his 1st wife, Abigail (Colesworthy). 

He d. Mar. 4, 1796, his wife d. Nov., 1819. Children: 

i Lavinia, b. Sept. 5, 1774, m. Mar. 8, 1798, to Robert Dick- 
son, 

ii Thomas, b. Nov. 26, 1776, d. s. p. in 1862. 

iii Stephen Brown, b. Jan. 18, 1779, m. Harriet Ruggles. 

iv Sarah, b. Mar. 31, 1781, d. in Apr., 1810. 

V Elizabeth, b. Aug. 20, 1783, m. to Isaac Smith, 
vi Jacob, b. Nov. 10, 1785, d. in the West Indies. 

vii Edward, M. D., Edinburgh, b. Jan. 24, 1788, m. (1) June 
20, 1822, Maria Pagan, of St. Andrew's, N. B., (2) 

Hazen, of St. John, N. B., (3) Maria Woodward 

Moore. He d. in St. Stephen, N B., in Jan., 1874. 

viii Joseph, b. Feb. 28, 1790, m. Kezia Reid, and d. Dee. 29, 
1826. 

ix Abigail, b. Aug. 20, 1792, d. .9. p. Dec. 5, prob. 1875. 

X Charles Brown, b. Aug. 20, 1794, m. McKinley, and 

d. at Pictou, N. S., Jan. 23, 1879. 

xi Elisha, b. July 28, 1796, m. (1) Rachel Dixon, (2) 

Whidden, By both marriages, he had 11 children. 
He d. in New York, July 16, 1879. 



634 KING'S COUNTY 

Judge Elisha2 DeWolf (Nathani), b. May 5, 1756, m. Sept. 1, 
1779, Margaret, dau. of Capt. Thomas and Desire (Gore) Ratch- 
ford, b. Sept. 3, 1762. See Personal Sketches. Children: 

i Lydia Kirtland, b. July 14, 1780, d. Mar. 17, 1784. 

ii William, b. Dec. 5, 1781, m. (1) Mar. 12, 1808, Amelia 
Fitch, and had 6 children: William Henry; John 
Starr; Thomas Andrew; Thomas Leonard, m Amelia 
i ' [ Allison; Mary Elizabeth, m. to Zachariah Chipman, 

and lived at St. Stephen, N. B. She was the mother 
of Alice, Lady Tilley, and 8 other children; James 
Ratchford. William DeWolf m. (2) Oct. 13, 1831, 
Sarah (Avery) Millet, who bore him one child, 
Louisa Margaret, d. young. He m. (3) Nov. 13, 
184 — , Lydia, dau. of John and Catharine (Cleverley) 
Prescott, of "Maroon Hall", Preston, b. Oct. 8, 1797. 

iii Olivia, b. Sept. 23, 1783, m. to Capt. Joseph Barss, and 
had 9 children: Elisha; Eliza Ann; Amelia; James; 
Joseph; John William; Thomas; Mary; Simon Fitch. 
Both Capt. Joseph and Olivia (DeWolf) Barss are 
buried in Oak Grove Cemetery, Kentville. 

iv Thomas Leonard, b. Dec. 19, 1785, m. Charlotte Hoster- 
man, and had a son, John Hosterman, d. s. p. in 
1834. 

V James Ratchford, b. Sept. 14, 1787, m. Apr. 29, 1810, Eliz- 
abeth, only dau. of Col. Joseph Freeman, of Liver- 
pool, N. S., and had 5 children. See Personal 
Sketches. 

vi Sophia Henrietta, b. Aug. 13, 1789, m. Jan. 14, 1810, to 
Simon Fitch, of Horton, and had 9 children : James 
Ratchford Fitch, M. D. ; Margaret Fitch, m. to 
Thomas Crane; Lydia Kirtland Fitch, m. to John 
William Barss; Amelia Maria Fitch; Simon Fitch, 
M. D.; Elizabeth Fitch; Elisha DeWolf Fitch; Mary 
Sophia Fitch, m. to Rev. Stephen William DeBlois, 
D. D.; John Fitch. Sophia Henrietta (DeWolf) 
Fitch d. Feb. 20, 1871; her husband d. in 1867, aged 
84. 

vii Nancy, b. July 25, 1791, d. young. 

viii Anne Ratchford, b. Dec. 21, 1792, m. (1) to Thomas Hen- 
derson Woodward, (2) Charles Randall. By her 1st 
marriage she had : Maria Woodward, d. unm. at Wolf- 
ville, May 11, 1837, aged 25; Mary Starr Wood- 
ward, m. to James Edward DeWolfe, of Kentville, 
and d. Feb. 14, 1849, aged 34. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 635 

ix Thomas Andrew Strange, b. Apr. 19, 1795, m. Dec. 30, 
1817, Nancy, dau. of Col. James and Mary (Crane) 
Eatchford, of Parrsborough. They had children 
James Ratchford, M. D., of Halifax, b. Nov. 19, 1818 
Frederick Augustus; Edwin; Thomas Ratchford 
Mary Sophia; Margaret Maria; Thomas Andrew 
Strange, Jr. ; Eliza Anne ; John Clarke ; Nancy Al- 
lison; Charles Frederick; Elisha Ratchford; Caroline 
Amelia; William Andrew. 

X Margaret Maria, b. Sept. 23, 1798, m. (1) to James Calkin, 
of Liverpool, N. S., (2) Apr. 4, 1843, to Joseph Starr, 
of Halifax. She d. May 16, 1862. Her daughter, 
Anne Maria Calkin, was m. to Edward Lawson, of 
Halifax. 

xi Elisha, Jr., b. Mar. 14, 1801, m. Oct. 17, 1826, Eliza, dau. 
of John Starr, M. P. P., of Halifax, and had 9 chil- 
dren. 

xii Mary Lucilla, b. Mar. 13, 1803, m. Sept. 1, 1831, to Rev. 
John Samuel Clarke, and d. Mar. 31, 1840. 

xiii Desiah, d. young. 

Stephen Brown^ DeWolfe (Edward^, Nathani), b. Jan. 18, 1779, 
m. Feb. 4, 1802, Harriet, dau. of Timothy, Jr., and Sarah (Dwight) 
Ruggles, of Annapolis county, b. Feb. 23, 1782. He d. at Wolfville, 
May 2, 1859. His wife d. Nov. 25, 1870. This family invariably 
spell the family name with the final e (DeWolfe). Children: 

i Cecilia Augusta, b. Nov. 15, 1802, m. (1) to Jonathan 
Emmons, (2) to Timothy Tobias, of Annapolis 
county. 

ii Amarilla Ruggles, b. Aug. 20, 1804, d. Dec. 6, 1819. 

ill James Edward, b. Dec. 8, 1806, m. July 5, 1838, Mary 
Starr Woodward, and had 5 children: Anna Maria; 
Alfred Augustus; Stanley Woodward; James Ed- 
ward; Melville Gordon. 

iv Thomas William, b. Sept. 15, 1808, m. May 20, 1835, Caro- 
line Sophia, dau. of Samuel Bishop, of Horton, and 
had children: Harriet Ruggles; Delia Sophia; 
Amelia Bishop, m. to Rev. Joshua Tinson Eaton; 
Charles Edward; Bessie; Fanny Fitch. 

V Jacob Freeman, b. Jan. 18, 1811, m. Aug. 31, 1837, Rachel 
Amelia, dau. of Samuel Bishop, of Horton, b. Oct. 8, 
1812. They had children: Ella Augusta; Stephen 
Ruggles; Clarence Edward; Freeman; Caroline So- 
phia; Harriet Florence. 



636 KING'S COUNTY 

vi Andrew Dwight, b. May 1, 1813, m. Ann Harris, and had 
children: Charles; "William Henry; Albert; Mary 
Adelia ; Emma, m. to Henry Bentley Webster, M. D. , 
of Kentville. 

vii Rev. Charles, D. D., b. May 30, 1815, m. Matilda, dau. of 
Martin Gay Black, of Halifax, and had children: 
Fanny, m. to Hon. Nathaniel L. White, K. C, of 
Shelburne; Louisa. See Personal Sketches. 

viii Elisha, b. Nov. 17, 1819, d. unm. 

ix Harriet, b. Jan. 20, 1822, m. to George Umphray, son of 
Alexander and Phebe (DeWolf) Umphray, and had 
children: Elizabeth Pry or; Harriet R. ; Augusta 
Cecilia, m. to Wilson Lesley Piteaithly; George; 
Stephen ; Charles DeWolf ; William Evans ; Winthrop 
Dwight. A grandson of Harriet is Rev. Lawrence 
Piteaithly of the Prostestant Episcopal Church. 

X Stephen, M. D., b. July 11, 1824, grad. at the University of 
Pa., for a time practised at Bridgetown, N. S., and 
then removed to New York City, where he died. He 

m. Copeland, and had children : Leslie C. ; Ella 

Anderson ("Elsie DeWolfe") ; Harold Copeland; 
Edgar; Gerald Charteris. Dr. DeWolfe d. in New 
York, Sept. 25, 1890. 



THIRD DeWOLF FAMILY 
JehieP DeWolf, of Killingworth, now Clinton, Conn., son of Ben- 
jamin and Margaret DeWolf, b. between 1721 and 1731, m. about 
1752, Phebe, dau. of Elisha and Mary (Harding) Cobb, of Eastham, 
Mass., b. Jan. 31, 1732, d. in 1800 (a descendant of John Howland 
and John Tilley, of the Mayflower.) He died about 1798. Children: 

i Phebe, b. Dec. 12, 1752, m. to Ezekiel, son of Gideon and 
Hannah (Allen) Comstock, bap. in Montville, New 
London, Dec. 14, 1747, and had 11 children. 

ii Jehiel, Jr., b. Nov. 24, 1755, m. (1), Elizabeth Martin, 
(2) Anna Witter. 

iii Margaret, perhaps a twin with Jehiel, Jr., perhaps b. in 
1757, and m. (1) to Samuel Witter, (2) to James 
Brown, whose 2nd wife was Lavinia, dau. of John 
DeWolf (Simeon). 

iv Oliver, b. in 1759, m. Amy, dau. of Timothy and Mercy 
(Harding) Bishop, of Horton, and had children : Pru- 
dence; Phebe; Ansell; Olive; Edward; Elisha; 
Henry; Caroline; Elijah. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 637 

V Daniel, b. May 28, 1761, m. Lydia Kirtland Harris. 

vi Jerusha, m, March 2, 1778, to Kev. Peter Martin, and had 
children: Mary; Sarah; Bartlett; Jerusha; Sophia. 

vii Eunice, b. in 1766, m. May 9, 1782, to Caleb, son of Gil- 
bert Forsyth, and had children: John; Elizabeth; 
Eunice; Andrew; James. 

viii Lydia, b. in 1768, m, (1) to Samuel Starr, eldest son of 
David and Susanna (Potter) Starr, b, Aug. 5, 1771, 
d. in Jamaica, W. I., Aug. 8, 1801. By this marriage 
she had two children: Maria Starr (the author's 
grandmother), and Henry Starr, d. also in Jamaica, 
unmarried, in 1822. After her first husband's death, 
she was m. (2) to Cyrus Peck, (3) to Moses Stevens. 
She d. Jan. 26, 1850. See the 2nd Starr Family. 

Jehiel2, Jr., DeWolf, (Jehieli), b. in Conn., Nov. 24, 1755, m. (1) 
in Horton, July 15, 1777, Elizabeth, dau. of Brotherton and Eliza- 
beth Martin. His 1st wife d. in Horton, June 30, 1784, in her 30th 
year, and he m. (2), in Horton, Anna, dau. of Samuel and Anna 
(Prentice) "Witter. He was a merchant and ship-owner in Horton, 
but in middle life transferred his business to New York City, where 
he died, Oct. 31, 1825. Children by first marriage : 

i Anna Eliza, b. May 12 or 16, 1778. 
ii Aaron, b. Dec. 18, 1779, d. .s. p. 
iii Elizabeth, b. 1781, d. June 27, 1785. 
iv Mary. 
Children by second marriage : 

V Elizabeth, m. to Samuel Shaw, of New York, 
vi Hannah. 

vii Phebe, b. 1791, m, to John Sigourney Webster, of East- 
port, Me., a cousin of Daniel Webster, 
viii Charlotte, b. 1791. 
Of the children of JehieP DeWolf, Anna Eliza^ DeWolf, 

was m. May 17, 1795, to Daniel, son of Stephen, Jr., and Elizabeth 
Harrington, of Cornwallis, and d. at Arichat, C. B., Aug. 
17, 1845. They had children: Charlotte Leonora, m. to 
Alexander McDonald, M. D., of Antigonish; Eliza Caro- 
line, b. June 24, 1798, m. to Samuel B. Wadsworth, 
son of General Peleg Wadsworth, of Eastport, Me., and 
uncle of the poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Aaron DeWolf; 
Edward Henry (See Personal Sketches); Charles Fortnam; Wil- 



638 KING'S COUNTY 

liam Moore; Mary Dana; William Moore; Stephen Harris; Louisa 

Maria ; Anna Phebe ; Daniel DeWolf ; Sarah Jane ; Clement Hubert. 

Mary3 DeWolf, was m. in 1806, to Josiah Dana, of Eastport, and 

had a son, William DeWolf Dana, b. Feb. 1, 1807, for many years in 

the Treasury Dept. at Washington, Hannah'^ DeWolf, was m. 

in 1808, to Jonathan Bartlett, a cousin of Samuel B. Wadsworth, 

and had 9 children, one of whom., Anna Maria Bartlett, was m. to 

Daniel T. Granger. Charlotte^ DeWolf was m. (1) to Samuel 

Brower, of N. Y., (2) to James Vanderpool of N. Y. 

DanieP DeWolf, J. P., M. P. P., (Jehieli), b. May 28, 1761, in 

Conn., m. in Horton Mar. 26, 1794, Lydia Kirtland, dau. of Leb- 

beus and Lucilla (DeWolf) Harris, b. Oct. 16, 1772. He d. Jan. 

31, 1837; she d. Nov. 17, 1843. See Personal Sketches. Children: 

i Daniel Kirtland, b. May 5, 1795, d. unm. Feb. 26, 1820. 
ii Thomas Cochran, b. Mar. 26, 1797, m. Esther Pineo, of 

Pugwash, and had 5 children, 
iii Caroline Sophia, b. Aug. 13, 1798, m. Mar. 26, 1818, to 

Capt. Thomas Ratchford. See the Ratchford Family, 
iv Robert Dickson, b. Aug. 7, 1800, m. Sept. 27, 1827, Sophia, 

dau. of Col. Sherman and Nancy (Crane) Denison, 

b. Feb. 10, 1804. They lived in Pugwash. Their 

children were : Nancy Leonard ; Caroline Sophia ; 

Mary Lucilla; William Crane; John Kirtland, m. 

Mary Jane, dau. of Amos and Elizabeth Eaton. 
V Sarah Alice, b. July 29, 1802, m. Sept. 3, 1825 to Daniel 

Starr, of Halifax, H. M. Vice Consul at Portland, 

Me. See the Starr Families, 
vi Catharine Ann, b. Oct. 19, 1804, m. to John Scott of Wolf- 
ville, and d. April 7, 1845 ; she had at least 3 children, 
vii Lucilla Olivia, b. Sept. 14^ 1808, m. as his 2nd wife. May 

15, 1839, to Winckworth Allen Chipman, and d. Dec. 

2, 1844. Children, d. young: Jessie Catharine; 

Julia Florence; Sarah Lucilla. 



THE DICKIE FAMILY 

The founder of the Dickie family in Nova Scotia was Matthew 
Dickie, a linen merchant of Londonderry, Ireland, who with his 
family, about 1765, though intending to come to some one of the 
colonies now the United States, came instead to Cumberland county 



FAMILY SKETCHES 639 

in this province. His wife was Janet ,(Nisbet), who belonged to the 
brave old race of Covenanters. In the same ship with the Dickies 
came the Creelmans and others who also settled in Nova Scotia. 
The sons of Matthew and Janet Dickie were all born in Ireland 
except John who was born in Cumberland, soon after the family 
came. Precisely how long the Dickie family remained in Cumber- 
land county we do not know, but in a short time they crossed Minas 
Basin and settled permanently in Cornwallis. There Matthew Dickie 
bought land paying for it the sum of i600. Many of the early 
members of the family are buried at Chipman's Corner. From the 
first the family was prosperous, and in each generation since the 
earliest, some members of it have been prominent in the legislature, 
and in other important official positions. Children: 

i AVilliam, m. McGowan, of Cumberland county. 

ii James, m. Martha Martin, of Cobequid. 

iii David, m. (1) Jerusha Clark, (2) Mrs. (Meek) 

Campbell, (3) Mrs. (Loomer) Stevens. 

iv John, m. Aug. 8. 1792, Olive Patton, of Fort Cumberland, 
and had a family. 

V Margaret. 

vi Martha. 

vii Ann. 

viii Kebecca. 

ix Mary McGowan, m. Feb. 24, 1803, to Rev. William Chip- 
man. 

The marriages of all of these daughters cannot be given here, 
though some of them will no doubt be discovered through other 
genealogical sketches in the book. From the daughters of Matthew 
Dickie many notable persons in the county have been descended, as 
for example, William Henry Chipman, M. P. P., Col. Leverett de 
Veber Chipman, M. P. ; and Thomas Logan, M. P. P. for Cumberland 
county. 

William^ Dickie (Matthew^), m. McGowan, of Cumberland 

county, and settled in Amherst. Among his children was a son, 
Robert McGowan, M. P. P., "who represented Cumberland in the 
legislature for 15 years, ' ' and d. in 1854. Robert McGowan m. Elea- 



640 KING'S COUNTY 

nor Chapman of a Yorkshire family in Cumberland, and Nov. 10, 
1812, had a son born, who became the Hon. Eobert Barry Dickie, 
M. L. C, a member of the Council from 1858 until 1867, in the lat- 
ter year being called to the Senate of Canada. In Oct., 1844, Hon. 
Robert Barry Dickie m. Mary Blair, 3d dau. of Hon. Alexander 
Stewart, C. B., who bore him 5 children: James Alexander, C. E., 
living in Halifax ; Arthur, Barrister at Amherst, M. P. for Cumber- 
land in the Dominion House of Commons, and late Minister of Jus- 
tice for Canada; Frank Stewart educated at King's College, Wind- 
sor, d. young; Mary, m. to Henry E. Milner, C. E., of London, Eng- 
land; Ellen, m. to Martin W. Maynard son, of Canon Maynard, of 
Windsor N. S., and lived at Ottawa. 

James2 Dickie (Matthew^) m. Martha Martin of Cobequid. 
Children : 

i Hugh Logan, b. May 25, 1799, m. (1) Janet Cummings, 
(2) Matilda Avery, (3) Nancy Blair. 

ii Isaac Patton, b. June 19, 1801, m. (1) Rebecca Barnhill, 
of Onslow, (2) Mary Borden, of Horton. 

iii William Andrew, b. Oct. 18, 1802, m. Ann Cummings of 
Cornwallis, and had a dau., Bessie, m. to Robert 
Crowe, of Truro, now of Los Angeles, California. 

iv George, b. Mar. 22, 1804, m. Sarah Bennett, of Horton (in 
1909 living at the age of 101). He had children: 
James B.; Adelaide; Rebecca; Ellen; George Albert; 
Herbert; Amanda; Leander; Pieman. 

V James Martin, b. Nov. 26, 1806, d. Jan. 7, 1896, m. Ros- 
anna Newcomb of Stewiacke, and had children: 
Martha A., m. to Leonard Newcomb; Lewis A., of 
Bridgetown, N. S. ; Jane, wife of Rufus R. Ells, of 
Sheffield's Mills, Cornwallis. 

vi John Cumming, b. Aug. 27, 1810, m. Hannah Newcomb, 
and had several daus. and one son, Robert Owen, 
who d. about 1900, j. p. 

vii Rebecca, b. Jan. 26, 1813, m. to William Dickson, 

viii David Henry, b. May 7, 1815, d. Sept. 8, 1900, m. his cou- 
sin, Susanna Dickie, of Hantspprt, and lived in 
Parrsborough. He had a son, Robert. 

ix Martha, b. April 27, 1817, m. to John Archibald, of 
Bible Hill, Truro, and had a son, Rev. F. W. Archi- 



FAMILY SKETCHES 641 

bald, Ph. D., pastor of the Presbyterian churches at 
Amherst, N. S., and St. Thomas, Ontario. 
X Robert, M. D., b. July 6, 1820, became professor in a med- 
ical college in Philadelphia. 

David^ Dickie (Matthew^) m. (1) Jerusha, dau. of Asa dark, who 
"settled on land adjoining that of Matthew Dickie, at what is now 

Hillaton," Cornwallisj (2) Mrs. (Meek) Campbell; (3) Mrs. 

(Loomer) Stevens. 

Children by first marriage : 

i Hon. Charles, M. L. C, m. June 21, 1826, Sarah, dau. of 
Eliakim and Lydia (Putnam) Tupper, of Stewiacke, 
Colchester county, b. Sept. 1, 1806, and had 3 sons 
and 2 daus. who lived to maturity. Two other chil- 
dren d. in infancy. Children: Edwin EliaJrim^, 
m. Sept. 8, 1852, Rachel, dau, of William Harris, 
and had children : Frederick ; Arthur ; Harry ; Frank ; 
Ada, m. to Clement B. Dickie (son of Hugh Logan) ; 
Annie, m. to C. F. Reynolds, of Halifax ; Alice, m. to 
Alfred Dickie of Lower Stewiacke. David M'^., 
who had children: Charles, postmaster at Canning; 

Joseph; Augustus; Lee; Charlotte, m. to An- 

nand, of Halifax; David, Jr.; Catherine. Charles 
W., unm. Sarah, m. to Rev. Wm. Murray; Emma*, 
m. to Charles Melville Blanchard, of Truro, and died 
in Truro, greatly beloved. 

ii Matthew. 

[And several daughters.] 

Hugh LoganS Dickie (James^, Mathew^), b. May 25, 1799, m. (1) 
May 22, or March 21, 1821, Janet, dau. of George and Rebecca Cum- 
mings, (2) Aug. 22, 1837, Matilda Susanna, dau. of Samuel and Mary 
Avery, of Horton, (3) at Truro, May 24, 1849, Nancy, dau. of James 
Downing and Esther (Hamilton) Blair, of Truro, b. Aug. 16, 1810. 

Children by first marriage : 

i Martha Ann, b. July 7, 1824, m. to Rev. Alexander Ross, 

and d. April 14, 1863. 
ii William Henry, M. D., b. Nov. 23, 1830, a physician in the 

service of the British Government, d. in the Island 

of Guernsey, in 1876. 
It is said there was another son who lived to maturity, and 

several children who d. young. 



642 KING'S COUNTY 

Children by third marriage : 

iii Clement B., b. May 1, 1850, m. Ada, dau. of Edwin E. 
Dickie, and had sons: Hugh Logan, M. D., a special- 
ist in diseases of the eye, ear, and throat; Edwin E., 
M. D., a physician in Halifax (deceased) ; Frederick 
M. lives in Vancouver, B. C. 

iv Robert C, b. Feb. 16, 1852, Prothonotary of the Supreme 
Court of King's County, m. Sept. 14, 1892, Mary A., 
dau. of Joshua and Rebecca Jane (Carruthers) 
Chase, and has 2 sons: Carl M., and Horace. 

Isaac Patton^ Dickie (James^, Matthew^), b. June 19, 1801, m. in 
Onslow, Feb. 6, 1827, or Feb. 19, 1826, Rebecca, dau. of John and 
Sarah (Crowe) Barnhill b. Aug. 10, 1803, d. June 15, 1847. He m. 
(2) Mary Borden, of Horton. His death, the result of an injury 
received from his being thrown from his horse, occurred Feb. 28, 
1858. He was a man of sterling qualities and for years was a re- 
spected elder in the Presbyterian Church. He lived in Cornwallis, 
in Onslow, and in Cornwallis, again. Children : 

i Hon. John Barnhill, b. Mar. 30, 1829. See Personal 

Sketches, 
ii James Edward, b. Jan. 18, 1832. See Personal Sketches, 
iii Isaac Logan, b. Sept. 5, 1835, in 1861 enlisted on the side 
of the North in the American "War, passed through a 
number of engagements, and afterward enjoyed a 

pension. He m. Gordon, of Summerside, P. E. 

I., and had 3 sons: Frank; Charles; George — all of 
whom married in the U. S. 



THE DICKSON FAMILY 

Although the Dickson (or Dixson) family early disappeared from 
King's County, its starting point in the province was the township 
of Horton. Among the Horton grantees. May 29, 1761, were Major 
Charles, Thomas, and William Dickson, and Sept. 6, 1763, Charles 
Dickson, Jr., all from Connecticut and of a family that had migrated 
there from the North of Ireland. Of these grantees Major Charles 
Dickson, at least, had lived in Colchester, Conn., for according to 
the Ingersoll Genealogy, Charles Dickson, of Colchester, m. in West- 
field, Hampden county, Mass., April 29, 1747, Miriam dau. of 



FAMILY SKETCHES 643 

Thomas and Sarah (Dewey) Ingersoll, b. Nov. 4, 1723. The eldest 
child of this couple was Eunice, b. Augr. 30, 1747, in Westfield, who 
was m. in Horton, or Cornwallis, Nov. 15, 1769, to John Chipman 
(Handley), to whom she bore fifteen children, among them a son, 
Daniel Chipman, named for her mother's brother, Daniel Ingersoll, 
and a son Jared Ingersoll Chipman, named for her first cousin, 
Capt. Jared Ingersoll, of Pittsfield, Mass. That Major Charles and 
Miriam Dickson had a son Daniel is probable, for a Daniel Dickson, 
Jr., was b. in Horton, March 28, 1783. Unless Major Charles had 
married before he married Miriam Ingersoll, the other Horton Dick- 
son grantees, Thomas and William could not have been his sons, 
for if they were born after 1747 they would hardly have been con- 
sidered old enough to receive grants of land. That Charles Dick- 
son, Jr., was a son of Charles, Sr., seems almost sure, and we know 
that he was born in 1746, whereas Charles, Sr., and Miriam were 
not m. till August, 1747. Major Charles Dickson died before 1785, 
for May 28 of that year his widow became the third wife of Major 
Samuel Starr, founder of the older branch of the Cornwallis Starr 
family. In 1765 William Nesbitt memorialized Governor Wilmot 
for a free grant of land on the north side of Minas Basin, for Major 
Charles Dickson, in his memorial stating that Major Dickson had 
incurred expense in raising a comp.any, which he had led under 
General Moncton at the capture of Fort Beausejour in 1755. That 
he died in Horton is most probable, and it is of course he who from 
1770 to June 28, 1776, when his seat was declared vacant for non- 
attendance, represented the town of Horton in the Legislature. For 
further information concerning this important family the records 
of Colchester, and of Volumtown, Conn., need to be carefully 
searched. Charles Dickson, Jr., according to his tombstone b. in 
1746, nine years before his father assisted in the capture of Fort 
Beausejour, m. in Horton, in 1772, Amelia, dau. of John and Mary 
(Forsyth) Bishop of New London, Conn., and Horton, N. S., b. in 
New London, Jan. 31, 1754, who after his death was m. (2) to 
Joseph McLane. Charles and Amelia (Bishop) Dickson must have 
removed from Horton to Colchester county immediately after their 



644 KING'S COUNTY 

marriage for their children were b. in Onslow. These were: John, 
b. June 7, 1773, m. Oct. 20, 1796, Lydia Hamilton ; Charles, b. April 
6 1775, m. Dec. 31, 1799, Rachel Todd Archibald ; Robert, b. July 8, 
1777, m. in 1798 Lavinia, eldest dau. of Edward (Nathan) and 
Sarah (Brown) DeWolf of Horton, b. Sept. 5, 1774 ; William, b. in 
1779, m. Jan. 29, 1801, Rebecca, 2d dau. of Col. Thomas, M. P. P., 
and Martha, Pearson, of Truro ; Abigail, b. in 1781, m. Feb. 27, 
1798, to Andrew Wallace, of Halifax; Sarah, b. in 1783, d. young; 
Mary, b. in 1785, m. in 1803, to Dr. John Murray Upjiam, son 
of Judge Joshua XJpham, of New Brunswick; Olivia, a twin with 
Mary, m. Feb. 5, 1801, to Col. David Archibald; Elizabeth, b. in 
1786, m. Mar. 16, 1802, to "Nova Scotia's greatest commoner," Hon. 
Samuel George William Archibald, b. in Truro, Feb. 5, 1777; 
Thomas, b. in 1788, m. Sarah Ann Patterson, of Pictou; Lavinia, b. 

, m. April 27, 1823, to the Rev. John Burnyeat, formerly of 

Loweswater, England, the first clergyman of the Church of England 
in Truro and that vicinity, father of Lady Archibald, wife of Sir 
Adams Archibald, K. C, M. Gr. 

In Onslow, Charles Dickson conducted an extensive mercantile 
business, farmed on a large scale, built vessels on each side of the 
bay, became an important land-owner in two townships, and was 
the most influential business man of his day. Some of his vessels 
were chartered by the government in 1792, in the deportation of the 
Maroons from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone. His land in Onslow 
he is said to have bought from William McNutt. In 1796, he visited 
the West Indies in one of his vessels, and on his return died at Hali- 
fax, of yellow fever. He was buried in St. Paul's burying 
ground, Halifax, and the inscription on his tombstone is as follows : 
''Here lyeth the body of Charles Dickson, Esq., who died Sept. 3, 
1796, in the 50th year of his age. He lived respected and died 
lamented. ' ' After his death, for a few years his four sons carried 
on his business, the firm being ''John Dickson and Company." 

Charles Dickson was long one of Colchester county's most im- 
portant public men, he was Registrar of Deeds from 1777 to 1796, 
and from 1785 to 1799, a representative for the town of Onslow. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 645 

His family had great prominence, his sons, Robert, William, and 
Thomas, were all members of the House of Assembly, as at the same 
time was their brother-in-law, Hon. Samuel George William Archi- 
bald, afterward the distinguished Master of the Rolls. His daugh- 
ters were strikingly handsome and married conspicuously well. 

Of the family of one of these, Elizabeth, a few words may be 
said. She became the wife of Hon. Samuel George William Archi- 
bald, whose biography has been admirably written by the late Mr, 
Israel Longworth of Truro (whose wife was a member of the sec- 
ond Starr family of King's County). Hon. S. G. W. Archibald, the 
3d son of Samuel and Rachel (Todd) Archibald, of Colchester 
county, was early admitted to the Nova Scotia Bar, in time becoming 
Judge of Probate, Solicitor General, Attorney General, and Master 
of the Rolls. Hem.(l) Mar. 16, 1802, Elizabeth Dickson, (2), in Aug., 
1832, Mrs. Joanna Brodley, and d. in Halifax, Jan. 28, 1846. His 
widow d. in England. His children by Elizabeth (Dickson) were: 
Charles, b. in Truro, Oct. 31, 1802, m. an heiress, Bridget Walker 
(probably of Lancashire, Eng.) ; John Duncan, b. March 27, 1804, 
m. Anna Mitchell of Halifax; Foster Hutchinson, b. Dec. 24, 1806; 
George William, b. Oct. 9, 1808 ; Sir Edward Mortimer, K. C, M. G., 
and C. B., b. May 10, 1810, m. in Sept., 1834, Catherine, 
dau. of Andrew Richardson, of Halifax and became British 
Consul at New York; Elizabeth, b. Jan. 19, 1812; Mary, b. 
Jan. 1, 1814, m. Aug. 29, 1833, to George Hill of Halifax; Rachel 
Dickson, b. April 22, 1815; Sir Thomas Dickson, Kt., Judge of the 
Queen's Bench, London, b. Aug. 23, 1817, m. Sarah Smith, b. in 
England; Sampson Salter Blowers, b. Apr. 1, 1819, m. Anovie, dau. 
of William and Isabel Corbett ; Peter Suther, b. Sept. 9, 1820 ; Wil- 
liam George, b. April 14, 1822; Richard, b. Sept. 9, 1823; Jane 
Amelia, b. Aug. 12, 1826 ; Robert Dickson, b. Feb. 17. 1828. 

Sir Adams George Achibald, K. C. M. G., one of Nova Scotia's 
most distinguished public men, who m. June 1, 1843, Elizabeth, dau, 
of Rev. John and Lavinia (Dickson) Burnyeat, was first, from 1870 
to 1873, Lieut.-Governor of Manitoba and the N. W. Territory, and 
then from 1873 to 1883, Lieut.-Governor of Nova Scotia, His chil- 



646 KING'S COUNTY 

dren were : Joanna, married to Francis Duke Laurie, C. E. ; Eliza- 
beth Alice, m. to the Rt. Rev. Llewellyn Jones, D. D., Bishop, of 
Newfoundland and Bermuda; and Mary Lavinia, m, to the Eev. 
Canon Heygate, of Boston, England. 



THE DODGE FAMILY OF HORTON 

The Dodge family of Horton is descended from Tristram Dodge, 
who, in 1661, went from Taunton, Mass., to Block Island, R. I., and 
settled there. One of his sons, John, who also lived in Block Island, 
had a son David Britain Dodge, b. Dec. 26, 1691, d. July 30, 1764. 
The last named had sons: David^, b. July 15, 1719, who left Col- 
chester, Conn., in 1761, and settled in Horton (New Minas) ; and 
Daniel, who had a grant at Grand Pre, but left it and returned to 
Colchester. David, the grantee, m. Frances , who after her hus- 
band's death also returned to Colchester with two of her sons, 
David and Asa. She left behind her, however, in Horton, a son, 
Gardiner^, b. in 1762, one of whose sons was David^, who married, 
Oct. 29, 1807, Phebe Scott. David and Phebe (Scott) Dodge had 
children : Sarah, b. Sept. 29, 1808 ; Elias, b. Apr. 11, 1810 ; George, 
b. Apr. 11, 1814 ; Hon. Thomas Lewis, b. July 19, 1816 ; William, b. 
June 29, 1818 ; Sophia Ann, b. Jan. 11, 1823. Of two of these sons, 
George Dodge, Esq., and Hon. Thomas Lewis Dodge, M. L. C. (and 
his family) information will be given in the Personal Sketches. 



THE DODGE FAMILY OF AYLESFORD 

Thomas Dodge, of Aylesford, probably of the Annapolis County 
family, married, Feb. 18, 1808, Sarah Benedict, and had children: 
Margaret Ann, b. June 11, 1809 ; Asael Walker, b. June 30, 1811 ; 
Nelson, b. Jan. 7, 1813 ; Josiah, b. May 24, 1815 ; Sarah, b. July 11, 
1817; Alexander, b. Nov. 20, 1819; Mary, b. Sept. 28, 1822; Eliza, 
b. May 3, 1830. The Annapolis County Dodge family is related to 
the King's County family, but remotely. Its founder was de- 
scended from William Dodge, another son of Tristram, through 



FAMILY SKETCHES 647 

Stephen Dodge, a Loyalist, who was born in Oyster Bay, Long 
Island, about 1748, and received a grant of land in Wilmot, in 
1784. See Theron Koyal Woodward's Dodge Genealogy, and the 
Calnek-Savary History of Annapolis. 



THE DUGAN FAMILY 

Christopher Dugan, of Aylesford, m. Sept. 27, 1796, Phebe Hinds, 
and had children: Margaret, b. July 23. 1797; Edward, b. Feb. 
12, 1799 ; Daniel, b. Dec. 23, 1801 ; Maria, b. Oct. 27, 1803 ; Thomas, 
b. July 31, 1804; John, b. May 26, 1806. John Dugan m. Nov. 19, 
1800, Margery Bass, and had children: Mary, b. Nov. 13, 1801; 
Lydia, b. Jan. 25, 1804, m. Dec. 17, 1833, to Thomas Farnsworth; 
Elizabeth, b. Jan. 11, 1806, m. Sept. 5, 1822, to Ezekiel Foster; 
Thomas, b. March 7, 1808 ; Margaret, b. Dec. 14, 1810 ; Christopher, 
b. Nov. 22, 1814; Joseph, b. July 6, 1812, m. Dec. 25, 1838, Sarah 
Berteaux; William, b. Jan. 15, 1816; Fargel, b. May 29, 1818, d. 
1819; Charles, b. July 27, 1821; Marten, b. Oct. 5, 1823; Grace, b. 
April 11, 1827. 



THE EAGLES FAMILY 

The origin of John Eagell, who received 500 acres of land in 
Horton, Aug. 24, 1763, we have not been able to discover. Con- 
cerning his descendants the Horton Tovm Book gives only the fol- 
lowing : 

WiUiam^ Eagles (probably son of John^) m. in Horton, Dec. 14, 
1773, Sarah Strong, and by her had children: Prudence, b. Sept. 
5, 1774; Henry, b. Mar. 24, 1776; Mary, b. Dec. 29, 1778; William, 
b. Jan. 15, 1780; Daniel, b. June 16, 1782; Sarah, b. Nov. 1, 1784; 
Jeremiah ; Stephen ; John ; Joseph ; Augustus ; Betsey ; Gideon Nel- 
son. 

Jeremiah^ Eagles (William^ Johni) m. Dec. 10, 1812, Olivia 
Coldwell, and is said to have had 13 children. Of these we know 
the following: , b. Apr. 17, 1814; Wellington, b. Oct. 15, 1813; 



648 KING'S COUNTY 

Jeremiah, b. July 22, 1815; Augustus, b. July 9, 1818; Olivia, b. 
May 13, 1820; George Thompson, b. Apr. 28, 1822. 

Johns Eagles (William^ Johni), m. Dec. 28, 1812, Anu Coldwell, 
and had children: Sarah Strong, b. Oct. 2, 1813; Elias, b. March 
8, 1815; John, b. Oct. 14, 1816; Prudence, b. Sept. 25, 1818; Isaac, 
b. Dec. 24, 1823. 

A Daniel Eagles m. in Cornwallis, Mar. 24, 1807, Alice, appar- 
ently Melton, but perhaps "Welton. 



THE EATON FAMILY 

Of the five Eaton families of New England the family founded 
by John and Anne Eaton in Haverhill, Mass., is one of the most 
widely known. The founders of this family were probably from 
Wiltshire, Eng., but their English ancestry has so far never been 
traced. In the fifth generation from John and Anne Eaton, was 
David, son of James and Eachel (Ayer) Eaton of Haverhill, who 
was born in Haverhill, Apr. 1, 1729. In 1751 he removed from 
Massachusetts to Tolland, Conn,, and Oct. 10th of that year mar- 
ried Deborah, dau. of Thomas and Sarah (Miller) White, of Cov- 
entry. In 1761 with his family he came to Cornwallis, and build- 
ing his house on what is now Canard Street, near Hamilton's Cor- 
ner, settled there for the rest of his life. By his will, which is on 
record at Kentville, the extent of his property may be seen. His 
wife, Deborah, died in Cornwallis May 20, 1790, and was buried 
in the little churchyard at Hamilton's Corner. He m. (2), Dec. 23, 
1790, the Rev. William Twining, Rector of St. John's Church, of- 
ficiating, Mrs. Alice (English) Willoughby, dau. of John and Abi- 
gail (Neweomb) English, and widow of Samuel Willoughby, M. D., 
M. P. P., born in Lebanon, Conn., Oct. 2, 1738, the date of whose 
death, however, we do not know. David Eaton himself died July 
17, 1803, and like his first wife was buried at Hamilton's Corner. 
Either there or in the Chipman's Corner churchyard with her first 
husband, Mrs. Alice (English, Willoughby) Baton must have been 
buried. See the English Family, and Willoughby Family. From 



FAMILY SKETCHES 649 

David and Deborah ("White) Eaton are descended all the Batons 
who have a King's County ancestry, but David had a nephew, Dan- 
iel Eaton, M. D., who came to Nova Scotia a little later than his 
uncle, and settling in Colchester County founded there a compara- 
tively small family, some of whose members, like Cyrus Eaton, at 
one time Major of Truro, have been prominent. The best known 
representatives of this family at present are Major Vernon Eaton, 
and his brothers, Robert and Edwin, all officers in the Canadian 
army. 

By its intermarriages, the King's County Eaton family is con- 
nected with most of the other important families in the county. 
By its White descent it is related to all the Whites of New England 
who trace to John White, companion of the Eev. Thomas Hooker, 
who like Mr. Hooker, became one of the honoured founders of the 
town of Hartford, Conn. Before he went to Conn. John White 
owned the land in Cambridge, Mass., on which Gore Hall and prob- 
ably other buildings of Harvard University stand. 

A Genealogy of the Nova Scotia Eatons was published by the 
author of this book in 1885, and is still in print. It will, therefore, 
not be necessary, as indeed it is not possible, to follow the family in 
all its branches here. In the vaults of the New England Historic 
Genealogical Society in Boston is a revised edition of "The Nova 
Scotia Eatons," in manuscript, which may at any time be seen. In 
the same custody is the manuscript of the whole family founded 
by John and Anne Eaton, of Haverhill, prepared with great labour 
by the late Rev. William Hadley Eaton, D. D., and arranged by 
the author of this book; this also may at any time be examined. 

By the following record of the children of David and Deborah 

(White) Eaton it may be seen that of the sons, two married into 

the Woodworth family, one into the Bliss family, two into the 

Rand family, one into the Wells family, and one into the Manning 

family. Of the daughters, one was married to Abel Strong, one 

to Capt. Harry Cox, one to John Manning, M. P. P., and one to 

John Wells, M. P. P. Children : 

i Susanna, b. Sept. 26, 1752, in Tolland, d. Oct. 18, 1761, 
in Cornwallis. 



650 KING'S COUNTY 

ii Stephen, b. Jan. 29, 1754, in Tolland, m. in Cornwallis. 
Elizabeth Woodworth, and had 10 children. Of this 
family, one son, Jacob, b. Mar. 31, 1776, m. Nov. 19, 
1801, Mary, dau. of Jacob and Anna (Morse) Troop, 
of Granville, Annapolis comity, b. Aug. 26, 1780, a 
grand-daughter of Valentine Troop, and has a grand- 
son, Professor Adoniram Judson Eaton, Ph. D. (Har- 
vard), for many years until the present connected 
with McGrill University, Montreal. Another son of 
Stephen, Col. Amos, b. July 28, 1785, m. Jan. 11, 
1810, Sarah, dau. of Lebbeus and Lu cilia (DeWolf) 
Harris, of Horton, a grand-daughter of Nathan and 
Lydia (Kirtland) DeWolf, b. Apr. 2, 1787, removed 
to Pugwash, Cumberland Co., and has a grandson, 
the Rev. Charles Aubrey Eaton, D. D., minister of 
a prominent church in New York City. 

iii Timothy, b. July 17, 1755, d. young in Tolland. 

iv Elisha, b. Jan. 8, 1757, in Tolland, m. in Cornwallis, Irene 
Bliss, dau. of Nathaniel and Eunice (Fish) Bliss, b, 
Jan. 4, 1761, related to Hon. Jonathan Bliss, M. L. C., 
Attorney General, Chief Justice, and President of 
the Council, of New Brunswick; to Hon. Judge Wil- 
liam Blowers Bliss of the Supreme Bench of Nova 
Scotia (whose wife was a dau. of Chief Justice Samp- 
son Salter Blowers, and who was the father of Mary, 
wife of the late Bishop Binney, and Elizabeth Ann, 
wife of the late Hon. William Hunter Odell, of Fred- 
ericton and Halifax) ; and to Sir Lemuel Allan Wil- 
mot, Governor of New Brunswick. Of the children 
of Elisha and Irene (Bliss) Eaton; Dan, b. Mar. 2, 
1780, m. (1) Martha Knowles, of Newport, Hants 
county, (2) Margaret Bulmer, of Amherst. He re- 
moved from Nova Scotia to Maine, and his family 
have lived chiefly in the United States. One of his 
sons, however, was George Eaton, shipbroker, of St. 
John, N. B. His third son was the Rev. William 
Wentworth Eaton, of Chicago, his youngest son was 
Col. Daniel Lewis Eaton, M. A., of Washington, D. C. 
(See Personal Sketches), one of his daus. m. into the 
New Hampshire Cutts family, and another became 
the wife of Rev. Thomas D. Howard, a Unitarian 
clergyman of Massachusetts. Elisha, b. June 30, 
1783, m. Mar. 22, 1814, Susanna, dau. of Enoch and 
Allison (Cogswell) Steadman, and had one son, 
David Owen, b. in 1822, d. unm. Jan. 14, 1861. (See 
the list of pew-holders in St. John's Church, Corn- 



FAMILY SKETCHES 651 

wallis, in 1819). William, b. April 20, 1786, m. 
Apr. 25, 1809, Nancy, dau. of John and Susanna 
(Hatch) DeWolf, of Horton, and had 7 children. He 
is still represented in the county in the Eaton and 
other names. George, b. Apr., 1790, m. Oct. 14, 
1813, Anne Catherine, dau. of Walter Carroll and 
Susanna (Church) Manning of Halifax, and had 4 
children. David, b. Sept. 25, 1792, m. June 2, 1814, 
Susanna, dau. of Peter and Rachel (DeWolf) Strong, 
of King's County, and had 10 children, several of 
Avhom became prominent in the county. James, b. 
May 16, 1802, m. Jan. 31, 1822, Hannah, dau. of Peter 
and Rachel (DeWolf) Strong, and had 10 children, 
the most widely known of whom is Brenton Halli- 
burton Eaton, K. C, D. C. L., Barrister, of Halifax. 
Of the two daughters of Elisha, and Irene (Bliss) 
Eaton, Lydia, b. Feb. 3, 1788, was m. Jan. 1, 1806, 
to Worden Barnab}^, and had 4 children; Eunice 
Deborah was married May 13, 1819, to her 1st 
cousin. Ward Eaton, son of John and Tabitha 
(Rand). 
Of the descendants of Elisha and Irene (Bliss) Eaton, a group of 
first and second cousins, several of whom are still living, have 
become widely known in the professional and business world. 
Among these are the late Hon. George Wheelock Burbidge, D. C. L., 
Judge of the Exchequer Court of the Dominion of Canada ; the late 
Theodore Harding Rand, M. A., D. C. L., distinguished educationist, 
author and college president; Brenton Halliburton Eaton, K. C, 
D. C. L., Barrister of Halifax; the late William Eaton, Inspector of 
Schools for King's County; the late Col. Daniel Lewis Eaton, M. A., 
Lawyer, member of the Territorial Council in Washington; Ben- 
jamin Rand, M. A., Ph. D., distinguished bibliographer and Librar- 
ian of Philosophy in Emerson Hall, Harvard University; and the 
late Frank Herbert Eaton, M. A., D. C. L. (the author's brother), 
an able educationist, whose influence is still widely felt in Nova 
Scotia, and British Columbia. Of this group, Brenton Halliburton 
Eaton, K. C, D. C. L., a son of James (Elisha) and Hannah (Strong) 
Eaton, was born in Cornwallis, Aug. 8, 1837, m. in Dartmouth, N. S., 
Aug. 4, 1870, Mary Jean, dau. of Llewellyn Evans and has had six 
children. He was graduated at Acadia in 1859, was admitted to 



652 KING'S COUNTY 

the Nova Scotia Bar, Oct. 11, 1864, was appointed Queen's Coun- 
sel, May 6, 1884, and has always practised law in Halifax. 
He has been a governor of Acadia University since 1877, and from 
that University in 1899, receiving the honorary degree of Doctor of 
Civil Law. His maternal grandmother was Rachel, daughter of 
John DeWolf, and niece of Benjamin DeWolf of Windsor, who m. 
Mar. 16, 1769, Rachel Otis of Scituate, Mass., dau. of Dr. Ephraim 
Otis and sister of Mrs. WiUiam Halliburton. Others of the group 
are: The Rev. Joshua Tinson Eaton, son of Henry Knowles and 
Lucy Ann (DeWolf) Eaton, b. Feb. 7, 1840, m. Sept. 12, 1876, 
Amelia Bishop, dau. of Thomas William and Caroline Sophia (Bis- 
hop) DeWolf; Harry Haveloek Eaton, fourth son of William and 
Anna Augusta Willoughby (Hamilton) Eaton, b. in Kentville, Jan. 
23, 1858, studied at Acadia University, in 1885 was admitted to the 
Illinois Bar, and has for many years practised law in Seattle, Wash- 
ington; and Arthur Watson Eaton, formerly in the Connecticut 
legislature, one of the most successful business men in New Eng- 
land, who is President and Treasurer of the "Eaton, Crane, and 
Pike Company," formerly the "Eaton-Hurlburt Paper Company," 
of Western Massachusetts, the largest firm in the country, if not in 
the world, devoted to the manufacture of fine stationery. Mr. 
Eaton is a son of Benjamin and Sophia (Ells) Eaton, grandson on 
his father's side of Enoch and Hannah (Rockwell) Eaton, and 
great-grandson of Elisha^ and Irene (Bliss) Eaton. On his mother's 
mother's side he is a great-grandson, also, of John^ Eaton. He m. 
in Conn., June 11, 1878, Fannie Maria, dau. of William and Caro- 
line E. Hanmer, of East Hartford, and has children: William Han- 
mer, m. in Colorado Springs, Col., July 17, 1901, Isabel Wescott 
Nicholson, dau. of the late Rev. Charles Mcllvaine Nicholson, of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church, and his wife, Gertrude (Nicker- 
son), dau. of the late Rev. Thomas White Nickerson, and sister of 
the Rev. Thomas White Nickerson, Jr., Rector of St. Stephen's 
Church, Pittsfield; Ethel Genevra, m. in February, 1905, to Win- 
throp Murray Crane, Jr., son of the Hon. W. Murray Crane, U. S. 
Senator, formerly Oovernor of Mass.; William Hammer, graduated 



FAMILY SKETCHES 653 

at Trinity College, Hartford, in 1899, and is now Secretary of the 
Eaton, Crane and Pike Company ; and Arthur Cornwallis, at present 
a student at Trinity College, Hartford. 

V Timothy, b. Aug. 27, 1758, in Tolland, m. Huldah Wood- 
worth, and had 7 children. 

vi Elijah, b. May 29, 1760, in Tolland, d. Aug. 15, 1761, in 
Cornwallis. 

vii Sarah, b. Feb. 13, 1762, in Cornwallis, m. to Abel Strong, 
and had 9 children, see Strong Family. 

viii Elijah, b. Oct. 16, 1763, m. Elizabeth Rand, and had 13 
children. 

ix David, b. July 13, 1765, m. Eunice Wells, and had 10 
children. 

X James, b. Aug. 14, 1767, m. (1) Nancy Manning, (2) Lucy 
Farnsworth. By his 1st wife he had 2 children, by 
his 2nd, 7. See Manning Family. 

xi Susanna, b. June 24, 1769, m. to Capt. Harry Cox, and 
had 9 children. See the Cox Family. 

xii Deborah, b. Jan. 6, 1771, m. to John Manning, M. P. P., 
and had 10 children. See Manning Family, 

xiii John, b. May 29, 1773, m. (1) May 29, 1794, Tabitha, dau. 
of John and Katherine Rand, (2) Jan. 28, 1808, her 
sister, Abigail Rand. By his two marriages he had 
12 children. He was for many years until his death a 
Deacon in the Congregationalist Church. His sons and 
daughters intermarried with the Ells, Wickwire, and 
other prominent families in the county; his son 
Ward, b. Nov. 28, 1797, m. his 1st cousin, Eunice 
Deborah Eaton, dau. of Elisha and Irene (Bliss) 
Eaton. 

xiv Prudence, b. Oct. 13, 1774, in Cornwallis, was m. to John 
Wells, M. P. P., and had 8 children. See the Wells 
Family. 

XV Amos, b. Sept, 9, 1778, d. in Apr., 1784. 

Wards Eaton (John2 David^), b. Nov. 28, 1797, m. May 13, 1819, 
his 1st cousin, Eunice Deborah Eaton, dau. of Elisha and Irene 
(Bliss) Eaton. He d. Feb. 1, 1870; his wife d. May 13, 1874. See 
Personal Sketches, Children: 

i Ann Isabella, b. Aug. 30, 1820, m. to Ebenezer Rand. See 
the Rand Family and Personal Sketches. 

ii Leander, b. Dec. 25, 1821, m. at St. John's Church, Corn- 
wallis, May 22, 1850, Paulina, dau. of Samuel and 
Susanna (Cox) Starr, b. July 29, 1823. He d. Nov. 



654 KING'S COUNTY 

13, 1895; his wife d. May 21, 1887. Children: Al- 
fred Starr, m. Elizabeth Jane George ; Fannie Susan ; 
Mary Sophia, m. to Charles Hemmeon Wright, for- 
merly of Halifax; Florence Jane, m, to Charles Ed- 
ward Ells; Ealph Samuel, m. Alice Russell Hanson 
(See Chapter XII of this book) ; Sarah Elizabeth, m. 
to Herbert Stairs, formerly of Halifax ; Charles Cott- 
nam Hamilton, m. Elizabeth Jane (George) Eaton; 
Alice Maude, d. unm. See First Starr Family. 

iii William, b. Sept. 30, 1823, m. at St. James Church, Kent- 
ville, Feb. 15, 1849, Anna Augusta Willoughby, 
youngest dau. of Otho and Maria (Starr) Hamilton, 
b. Sept. 11, 1828. See Personal Sketches and Second 
Starr Family. Children: Rev. Arthur Wentworth, 
Hamilton, D. C. L. ; Frank Herbert, D. C. L. ; Anna 
Morton, m. to George A. Layton, in the Dominion 
Civil Service, a Warden of St John's Church, Truro, 
and has one son, Francis Paul Hamilton Layton, 
B. A., LL. B., Dalhousie; Rufus William, m. Anna 
Laurie Sutherland; Harry Haveloek, lawyer; Leslie 
Seymour, m. Augusta Billing Thorne. See Personal 
Sketches, and Sutherland Family, and Thorne Family. 

iv John Rufus, b. July 3, 1826, m. Dec. 1, 1849, by Rev. John 
Storrs, Rector of St. John's Church, Cornwallis, Jose- 
phine Collins, fourth dau. of Otho and Maria (Starr) 
Hamilton, b. Dec. 11, 1826. He d. in Boston, Nov. 
4, 1851, and his widow m. (2) Aug. 5, 1863, Rev. 
David Stuart Hamilton, D. C. L., who d. in Alabama, 
a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 
John Rufus Eaton had children: Emma Maria, d. 
young; Grace Hunnewell, now the widow of Wil- 
ford Henry Chipman, late of Kentville and Middle- 
ton, Manager of the Canadian Bank of Commerce at 
Middleton. Her son Leverett de Veber Chipman, Jr., 
is studying for Orders at King's College, Windsor. 

v Martha, b. Mar. 9, 1828, m. to Major John Edward Starr, 
son of Samuel and Susanna Cox Starr. See First 
Starr Family. 

vi James Stanley, b. Feb. 4, 1836, m. May 28, 1860, Janet, 
dau. of Peter and Janet (Patterson) Nicholson (for- 
merly of Dumfries, Scotland). Children: Clarence 
Ward, m. Lucy Harmon, of Portland, Me.; Agnes 
Lilian, m. to B^ey. John Mackenzie Lowden, D. D. ; 
Walter Ernest, m. Julia Burbidge; John Nicholson 
(of Boston, Mass.) m. Abby Louise, dau. of Walter 



FAMILY SKETCHES 655 

and Grace (Weston) Allen, of Boston. See Lowden 
Family and Bnrbidge Family. 



THE ELDER FAMILY 

The Elder family, a family unusually gifted, was founded in 
Hants county by Matthew^ Elder, who came as a young man from 
County Donegal, Ireland, to Windsor, and married there Rebecca 
Jenkins, dau. of Nathaniel Jenkins, who had come from Armagh, 
Ireland, probably about the same time as William Elder. Matthew 
Elder settled in Falmouth on the fine old Elder homestead, "Green- 
wood," which remained in his family for three generations. He 
made his will Jan. 11, 1811 (proved Mar. 21, 1811), and died per- 
haps in January of that year, aged 63. His wife d. Oct. 9, 1809, 
in Halifax, while on a visit to her son James. She was buried in 
St. Paul's burying ground on Pleasant Street, as was also her 
son James. Children : 

i John, M. P. P. for Hants Co., b. in 1780, m. in 1787, Eliza- 
beth Allison, dau. of John and Nancy (Whidden) 
Allison, of Newport, Hants county, and sister of Ann 
Allison, m. to Hon, Hugh Bell of Halifax; of David 
Allison, who m. Mary Fairbanks of Halifax, and 
was a member of the firm of Fairbanks and Allison; 
and of Fanny Allison, who was m. to Dr. S. 
Wells, R. N., and d. in Bermuda. John and Elizabeth 
Elder had 7 children, all of whom d. young. See 
Allison Genealogy. 

ii William, b. in 1784, was for some years an important of- 
ficial in H. M. Dockyard at Halifax, but while in 
this position began to preach. He was first ordained 
a Baptist, in Halifax, but in time his views broad- 
ened and he took Orders in the English Church. 
When he died he was in charge of a parish in Cape 
Breton. He was a fervid, eloquent, finished speaker, 
and a devout and earnest man. He m. Elizabeth 
Fraile, of Chester, N. S., and d. in the autumn of 
1848, at Sydney, C. B. His children were: Amelia; 
Thomas; Rebecca, m. to James Freeman, of Liver- 
pool, N. S. ; Edward ; Samuel ; John, all of whom, ex- 
cept Rebecca, d. unm. Of Samuel Elder we have 
made conspicuous mention elsewhere in this book. 



656 KING'S COUNTY 

He was b. in Halifax, and was graduated at Acadia 
College in 1851, in the first class that left the col- 
lege. His sophomore essay was a poem on the Ex- 
pulsion of the Acadians; his graduation essay was 
a poem entitled ''The External World Coloured by 
the Soul's Own Emotions." He became pastor of a 
Baptist church in Fredericton, N. B,, but died young 
unm. 

iii Samuel, b. Aug. 12, 1786, m. Sarah Shaw. 

iv Nathaniel, b. in 1788. 

V Rebecca, b. in 1790. 

vi James, b. in 1791. 

vii Thomas, b. in 1793. 

viii Simeon, b. in 1795. 

ix Sarah, b. in 1797. 

X Margaret, b. June 12, 1799, m. in July, 1821, to James 
Whidden Allison, son of John and Nancy (Whidden) 
Allison, b. in Horton, Dec. 1, 1795. They had 7 
children, one of whom is Rev. Professor David Al- 
lison, LL. D., President of Mt. Allison University at 
Sackville, N. B., and formerly Superintendent of 
Education for Nova Scotia; another William Henry 
Allison, M. P. P. for Hants county, and later an 
important official in the Civil Service of Canada. 

xi Jane, b. in 1804. 

Samuel^ Elder (Matthew^), b. in Falmouth, Aug. 12, 1786, after 
his marriage settled in King's County. He m. Jan. 16, 1818, Sarah 
Shaw, dau. of Peter Shaw, Jr., and his wife Nancy (Smith), and 
grand-daughter of Peter Shaw, a Rhode Island planter in Fal- 
mouth, whose place was near that of the Elders. Samuel Elder d. 
at Hantsport, Oct. 9, 1813, and is buried there. His wife d. at the 
house of her daughter, Mrs. Charles Frederick Eaton, of Cornwallis, 
June 1, 1880, and like her husband is buried in Hantsport. Mr. 
Elder studied for a time at King's College, Windsor, but did not 
graduate. He prepared for the ministry, "but did not enter fully 
on its duties. He was a gr6at reader of the standard authors, Mil- 
ton, Thompson, Young, and Cowper. He himself wrote a good deal 
of poetry in the Young and Cowper measures." His family richly 
inherited his gifts. Children: 
i James, b. at Truro. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 657 

ii Capt. Peter Shaw, went down in his ship off Placentia 
Bay, Newfoundland. 

iii Capt, Thomas. 

iv William, d. in infancy. 

V Nancy Smith, m. to Charles Frederick Fitch, of Wolfville. 
Children: Jennet Elder, wife of Andrew M. Jack 
of Halifax; William Fitch; Annie Shaw; Charles 
Frederick; Alice Maud, m. to Rev. Donald Grant. 

vi Rebecca Jenkins, m. to David J. Harris, formerly of 
Wolfville. Children: Laura Winifred, of Maiden, 
Mass.; James Elder, of Maiden; Professor William 
Fen wick, of Cambridge, Mass., who studied at Ox- 
ford and in Berlin, was for some years connected 
with Harvard University, and is now engaged in 
literary work, 

vii Eliza Jane, m., as his 2nd wife, to Charles Frederick Eaton 
of Cornjvallis, Children: Charles William; Lewis 
Frederick; Edith Irene, m. to William S. Wood- 
worth, M, D,, of Kentville, 

viii Irene, m, to Albert F. Morton, of Middleton, N, S. Resi- 
dence, "The Bluffs," dementsport, Annapolis 
county. Children: Charles Forman; Alberta Irene; 
P, Josephine, m, to Arthur Silver Burns, M, D,, of. 
Bridgetown, N, S. Mrs. Morton's name also wiU be 
found elsewhere in this book, 

vs. Professor William, D, Sc, b, in 1840, d, June 25, 1905. 
He m. Dec. 24, 1879, Caroline Scammen, of Water- 
ville. Me., and had one child, Marjory Louise, m, to 
George Stevenson, Dr, William Elder was for some 
time Professor of Chemistry and Physics at Acadia 
College, and while there gave his students much in- 
spiration, not only for scientific study but for the 
study of literature. He was a gentleman of "noble 
personal appearance and character, and his lecture- 
ship on high themes apart from his scientific spe- 
cialty, made him an attractive centre and a force 
for good among the young men whom he taught." 
From Acadia he went as professor to Colby Uni- 
versity, Waterville, Maine, where he died. In his 
early life he wrote verses, chiefly translations. His 
only published work we know of is a philosophic-re- 
ligious work entitled "Ideas from Nature," 



658 KING'S COUNTY 

THE ELDERKIN FAMILY 

The Elderkin family of Connecticut, which has long been honour- 
ably represented in the township, of Horton, in King's County, was 
founded in Conn., by John Elderkin, b. in England about 1612, who 
first appears at Lynn, Mass., in 1637. From Mass. he removed to 
Providence, R. I., and from there to Connecticut, in the latter state 
finally locating at Norwich, where he died June 13, 1687. He had 
a son Joseph, whose record is as follows : 

Joseph Elderkin, b. at Norwich, Conn., Dec. 27, 1672, m. July 
27, 1703 Deborah Brockway and had children: Joseph, b. in 1707;, 
Benjamin; Elizabeth; Jeptha; and Deborah. Of these children, Jo- 
seph, the eldest m. Apr. 28, 1731, Mary Story, and it is undoubtedly 
he who, Feb. 4, 1764, received 750 acres of land in Horton. Whether 
he came to Horton to live, or not, we do not know, but the Horton 
Town Book gives the record of his son, Jeptha, b. in Norwich, May 
19, 1750. He had in all, according to the Elderkin Genealogy, 10 
children. 

Jeptha2 Elderkin (Joseph^) b. May 19, 1750, m. in Horton, Dee. 

23, 1779, Emma, dau. of John and Sarah (Wallgate) Johnson. 
Children : 

i John, b. Sept. 30, 1780. 

ii Mary, b. Apr. 4, 1782. 

ill Nancy, b. Apr. 5, 1784. 

iv Sarah, b. May 10, 1787. 

V William, b. July 10, 1789. 

vi James, b. June 6, 1791, m. Elizabeth Kerr, and had a son 
Jeptha, 

vii Margaret, b. May 4, 1793. 

viii Joseph J., b. May 23, 1795. 

ix Emma, b. June 25, 1797. 

X Charlotte Ann, b. May 21, 1799. 

xi Elijah, b. Oct. 18, 1801, lived a little to the east of Kent- 
ville, and had a daughter Charlotte, m. to William 
Sharp, and a daughter Emma, m. to John Mitchell. 
In Conn, a close relationship existed among the fam- 
ilies of Avery, Bishop, Comstock, Elderkin, Fitch, 
Forsyth, Lee, Prentice, and Turner, all of which 
have been importantly represented in Horton. In 
Horton, Apr. 10, 1763, Elizabeth Elderkin, b. Oct. 30, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 659 

1740 (the Elderkin Genealogy says Oct. 19, 1739), 
undoubtedly a daughter of Joseph and Mary (Story) 
Elderkin, was m, to Elijah Lothrop, b. in Nor- 
wich, Conn., Oct. 20, 1743. She d. in Lebanon, N. H., 
Feb. 17, 1812. 



THE ELLIOTT FAMILY 

According to the Calnek-Savary History of Annapolis, John El- 
liott, from the north of Ireland, came to the province young and 
settled finally on Handley Mountain. His 5th child was Benjamin, 
b. in 1801, who m. Ann Aekerly, and settled in Aylesford. Ben- 
jamin's children were: Abraham, m, Caroline Bent, but had no 

issue; Isaac, b. Oct. 14, 1824, m. (1) Mary Bowlby, (2) Parker; 

Kaehel, b. July 23, 1826, m. to Samuel Bowlby; Jacob, b. Dec. 23, 
1827, m. Harriet Lee; Bayard, b. Dee. 20, 1829, m. Zeruiah Demp- 
sey, but had no issue; John, b. Dec. 6, 1832, m. Maria Morton; 
Phebe, b, Dec. 31, 1833, m. to Enoch Bowlby; Benjamin, b. Mar. 10, 
1839. This is a different family of Elliotts from that into which 
Hopestead Barnaby, of Comwallis, married. See the Barnaby Fam- 
ily, and the Calnek-Savary History of Annapolis, pp. 505-6. 



THE ELLS FAMILY 

The Ells family in King's County is descended from Joshua Ells, 
the Cornwallis grantee, and his wife Mary. The progenitor of this 
family in America was Joh n Eells, who was made freeman at Dor- 
chester, Mass., May 14, 1634. His son Samuel Eells bap. May 3, 
1640, removed to Newbury, Mass. in 1645, m. Aug. 1, 1663, Ann, 
dau. of Robert Lenthall, of Newport, R. I., and had children: Sam- 
uel; John; Samuel; John; Mary Robert; Robert; Rev. Nathaniel 
(the 3rd ordained minister of Stonington, Conn., grad. at Harvard 
in 1728). The precise place of Joshua^ Ells of Cornwallis in the 
Ells family of Conn, has not been ascertained, nor has any record 
been found of his marriage, or of the births of all his chil- 
dren. His will was made in Cornwallis, Jan. 1, 1780, and registered 



660 KING'S COUNTY 

Jan, 25, 1797. In it the testator mentions his wife Mary, and his 
children: Joshua, Jr.; Samuel; Jedediah; Daniel; Abigail; Mary. 

i Hannah, m. Oct. 21, 1764, by Rev. Joseph Bennett, to 
Joseph Chase. She d. Apr. 17, 1815. 

ii Mary, b. May 25, 1745, m. Oct. 22, 1767, as his 2nd wife, to 
Perry Borden, b. Nov. 9, 1739, and had 9 children. 

iii Joshua, Jr., m. (1) Mehitable Rand, (2) Mrs. Sarah 
(Rockwell) Stiles. 

iv Abigail, m. Dec. 23, 1773, to Oliver, son of Hezekiah and 
Susanna (Bailey) Cogswell, and had 4 children. 

V Samuel, m. Dec. 2, 1784, Amelia, dau. of Benjamin and 
Amelia Borden, and had children: Perry Borden, b. 
July 11, 1785; John, b. Jan. 2, 1787; Mary, b. Apr. 
22, 1788, and no doubt others. 

vi Daniel, b. Apr. 2, 1765, in Cornwallis, m. Nov. 7, 1787, 
Elizabeth, dau. of Zadoc and Mary Bennett. Chil- 
dren: Olive, b. Jan. 14, 1788; John, b. Mar. 25, 
1789, and perhaps others. 

vii Experience, m. Jan. 8, 1788, to Prince Coffin, and had 
8 children. 

viii Jedediah, m. Apr. 17, 1794, Sarah, dau. of Robert and 
Jerusha Kinsman. Children: William, b. Jan. 4, 
1796, m. Feb. 4, 1818, Sophia, dau. of John and Ta- 
bitha (Rand) Eaton, b. Nov. 18, 1799 and had 11 
children; Benjamin b. Nov. 20, 1706, m. (1) May 
21, or Jan. 24, 1821, Ann, dau. of David and Eunice 
(Wells) Eaton, b. May 28, 1801, (2) his 1st wife's 
sister, Eliza, b. July 19, 1810; David, b. May 6, 1800- 
Jerusha, b. Oct. 20, 1803 ; Robert, b. Jan. 13, 1805, m! 
Dec. 17, 1828, Catharine, dau. of John and Tabitha 
(Rand) Eaton, and had 8 children; Lydia, b. Jan. 
28, 1808; Lavinia, b. Mar. 27, 1810; Nathan, b. Jan. 
6, 1815 ; Sarah Jean, b. Sept. 23, 1816. 

Joshua2, Jr., Ells (Joshua^), m. (1) June 11, 1772, Mehitable, dau. 
of Caleb and Katherine (Kettell) Rand, Sept. 4, 1812, Mrs. Sarah 
(Rockwell) Stiles, dau. of Jonathan and Margaret Rockwell. Chil- 
dren: 

i Lemuel, b. June 9, 1773, m. Susanna, dau. of Aaron and 
Ruth (Parish) Cogswell, and had children: Anna*; 
Deacon Joshua*, m. May 6, 1834, Mary Ann, dau. of 
Stephen and Eunice Jackson, and had children: Eu- 
nice Ann, b. Jan. 26, 1836; Mary Eliza, b. Sept. 4, 
1839 ; Maria Agnes, b. Apr. 23, 1842 ; Deacon Charles 



FAMILY SKETCHES 661 

Edward, b. Jan. 27, 1846, m. Aug. 19, 1880, Florence 
Jane, dau. of Leander and Paulina (Starr) Eaton. 

ii Thomas, b. June 30, 1775, m. June 30, 1802, Ruth, dau. 
of Aaron and Ruth (Parish) Cogswell, and had chil- 
dren: Aaron Cogswell, b. Mar. 25, 1803; Mehitable, 
b. Apr. 11, 1805, m. to Gideon Loomis; Rebecca, b. 
Jan. 1, 1807, m. to Thomas Longley; Oliver, b. Mar. 
17, 1809, m. Mercy Parish ; Sarah, b. Aug. 11, 1813 ; 
Lucy Naomi, b. Aug. 29, 1815. 

iii Mary, b. Dec. 5, 1777, m. to the Rev. Robert Dickie (Pres- 
byterian). 

iv Ruth, m. to Andrew Bentley. 

V Hannah, m. as his 2nd wife to Rev. Robert Dickie. 

vi Susan, m. to Whitman. 

The children of William^ (Jedediah^, Joshua^) and Sophia 

(Eaton) Ells were : John Eaton, b. Jan. 4, 1819, d. 1902 ; William, Jr., 

b. May 7, 1821 ; Joseph, b. Nov. 19, 1824 ; Tabitha, b. Aug. 20, 1826 ; 

Sophia, b. Oct. 31, 1828 ; Martha, b. March 4, 1831 ; Mary, twin with 

Martha; Martha Jane, b. Aug. 8, 1832; Leander, b. Jan. 10, 1835, 

d. Jan. 31, 1836 ; Jedediah, b. Aug. 22, 1836 ; Emma Jane, b. Nov. 19, 

1833 ; Prudence Ann, b. Feb. 11, 1841. 

The children of Robert^ (Jedediah^, Joshua^) and Catharine 

(Eaton) Ells were : Qement, b. Oct. 19, 1829 ; Judson,b. Sept. 28, 1831 ; 

Nancy and Eunice, twins, b. May 20, 1833 (Eunice became the 1st 

wife of Charles F. Eaton, and d. .?. p., Jan. 8, 1866 ; Watson, b. Sept. 

1, 1835; Winckworth, b. Dec. 20, 1837; Nathan, b. Sept. 25, 1839; 

John Benson, b. Oct. 22, 1841 ; Robert Wheelock, LL. D., F. R. S. C, 

etc., etc., a distinguished geologist and member of the Canadian 

Geological Survey, residence, Ottawa. Of this family Nathan m. a 

daughter of John and Elizabeth North, and has a daughter, Mrs. 

Lillian (Ellis) Charlton, wife of William J. Charlton, of Boston, 

Mass. A poem of Mrs. Charlton's is printed in this volume. 



THE ENGLISH FAMILY 

Richard English, b. about 1687, m. Mary , and lived first in 

Bristol, R. I. In 1717, however, about the same time as did James 
Pineo, ancestor of the Cornwallis Pineo family, he removed to Leb- 



662 KING'S COUNTY 

anon, Conn., where he d. April 15, 1748, aged 61. His wife d. there 
June 17, 1748, aged 60. His children were : John, b. in Lebanon, 
Oct. 17, 1718, m. Nov. 9, 1738, Abigail Neweomb, b. Nov. 16, 1715, 
dau. of Deacon John Neweomb, and sister of Capt. Eddy; Mary, b. 
Aug. 29, 1720, m. to Moses Dewey, the Cornwallis grantee ; Hannah, 
b. Sept. 19, 1722, m. Nov. 2, 1740, to Peter, son of HezeMah New- 
eomb; Abigail, b. Nov. 12, 1724, m. to Capt. Eddy, son of Deacon 
John Neweomb, (b. Sept. 23, 1713) ; Sarah, b. July 23, 1727, m. Sept. 
22, 1746, to Silas Woodworth, the Cornwallis grantee, b. in Leb- 
anon, March 22, 1725; Phebe, b. July 30, 1729, m. to John Porter, 
(prob. son of Samuel.) Of this large family, two of whose mem- 
bers were wives of Cornwallis grantees, John, the eldest, died some 
time before the Connecticut immigration, and his widow, Abigail 
(Neweomb) English, with her father and brothers, received a grant 
in Cornwallis. Her children were: 

i Alice, b. Oct. 2, 1738, m. (1) Aug. 28, 1760 (by Isaac 

Deschamps, Esq.), to Samuel Willoughby, M. D., 

(2) Dec 23, 1790, (by Hev. John Wiswall), as his 

2nd wife, to David Eaton. The date of her death we 

do not know. See the Willoughby and Eaton Families. 

ii Richard, b. Oct. 12, 1741. 

iii Abel, b. April 8, 1743, m. May 15, 1777, Anna, dau. of Eze- 
kiel and Ann (Dewey) Calkin. Child, Rebecca, b. 
April 28, 1778. 

iv John, b. March 22, 1745, m. (1), June 19, 1766, Hannah, 
dau. of Jonathan and Mercy Longfellow, who d. 
Feb. 10, 1767, aged 19. He m. (2) Oct. 31, 1771, 
Christina, dau. of Hezekiah and Susanna Cogswell. 
Children by 1st wife: John and Jonathan, twins, b. 
Jan. 25, 1767. Children by 2d wife : Hannah, b. Sept. 
18, 1772 ; Abigail, b. Sept. 18, 1773, m. Dec. 4, 1793, 
to Isaac Webster; Nanny, b. July 8, 1775; Olive, b. 
April 2, 1777, d. Feb. 2, 1779; Mary, b. Oct. 13, 1779; 
John, b. Feb. 4, 1781; Zephaniah, b. Sept. 17, 1782; 
Oliver, b. June 10, 1784; Charles, b. Sept. 9, 1786; 
John, b. Dec. 17, 1789 ; Abel, b. March 16, 1791 ; 
Sophia, b. April 8, 1793. 

V Abigail, m. in Horton, Oct. 29, 1778, to Samuel Denison, 
who must have been the son, Samuel, of Col. Robert 
and Prudence (Sherman) Denison, b. in 1746, who 
is said in the Denison Genealogy, p. 62, to have d. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 663 

unm., in 1820, aged 74. (Dr. Brechin is not sure that 
Abigail is of this English family.) 

vi Mary, b. in 1749, m. Oct. 11, 1770, to Cyrus, son of Benja- 
min and Sarah (Champden) Peek, b. in Lyme, 
(3onn., May 2, 1746. She d. s. p., May 2, 1808, and 
Cyrus Peck m. (2), Mrs. Lydia (DeWolf) widow of 
Samuel Starr, 

vii Joel. Dr. Brechin saj^s he is not sure that Joel belongs to 
this family, but we think that both he and Abigail 
must belong here. Joel had a dau. Elizabeth, m. 
Nov. 28, 1799, to Cyrus Webster ; a son, Lee, m. April 
27, 1812, Elizabeth D. Sharp, dau. of Robert Sharp; 
and a dau. Mehitable, m. Dec. 26, 1712, to Jonathan 
Fry. 



THE FARNSWORTH FAMILY 
Daniel! Farnsworth, who settled in Aylesford, is said in the His- 
tory of Annapolis to have been a son of Isaac Farnsworth (Jonas, 
Benjamin, Matthias), b, in Worcester, Mass., Aug. 9, 1750, and his 
1st wife, Hannah (Hill), who lived for a time in Jonesboro, Maine. 
Daniel, b. about 1774, m. Dec. 8, 1803, Jerusha Earl, of Horton, and 
thereafter lived in Aylesford. He had children: Sarah, b. May 21, 
1804; Nelson, b. Dec. 25, 1806; Thomas, b. March 16, 1808; Isaac, b. 
May 6, 1811; William, b. March 23, 1814; Lois Jane, b. Oct. 13, 
1816; Robert James, b. March 5, 1820. For much information con- 
cerning the Farnsworth see the Calnek-Savary History of Annap- 
polis. See also the Farnsworth Genealogy. In the History of An- 
napolis it will be seen that Solomon and Lucy (Farnsworth) Farns- 
worth of Annapolis had a dau, Frances, b, Oct. 11, 1774, who be- 
came the wife of Rev. James Manning, and was the grandmother 
of Hon. Mr. Justice Longley of the N. S. Supreme Bench, and a dau. 
Lucy, b. June 15, 1777, who became the 2d wife of James Eaton of 
Cornwallis, 



THE FITCH FAMILY 

The Fitch family, transplanted from Lebanon, Conn., to King's 
County, are descended from Rev. James Fitch, b. at Booking, Essex. 



664 KING'S COUNTY 

Eng., Dee. 24, 1622, who came to N, E. and was pastor for 14 years 
at Saybrook, Conn. He afterward removed to Norwicli, where he 
d. in 1702. His 1st wife was Abigail, dau. of Eev. Henry White- 
field, who d. Sept. 9, 1659 ; his 2nd wife was Priscilla, dan. of Major 
John and Ann (Peck) Mason, b. at Windsor, Conn., in Oct., 1641. 
The Horton family was founded by Ebenezer^ Fitch, son of 
Nathan (Nathaniel, Eev. James) and Hannah (Huntington), who 
was b. at Windsor, Conn., in 1731, m. Lydia Fish, and in 1765, it is 
said, removed from Wallingford, Conn., to Amherst, N, S., later, 
however, coming to Horton. Children : 

i Simon, b. in 1751, m. Bathsheba Huntington. 

ii Cyprian, m. Kuth Eand (Caleb, Caleb), and lived in 

Shepody, N. B., but in 1795 removed to New York, 
iii Ebenezer, Jr., m. Abigail Bishop. 

iv Frederick m. (1) Eachel Bishop, (2) Mary Parker, (3) . 

V Philander, m. as his 2d wife, to Charles, son of Col, John 

and Mary (Forsyth) Bishop, 
vi Hananh, m. Nov. 9, 1778, to Ezra Huntington, 
vii Lydia. 
viii Irene, m. at Wallingford, Conn., in 1798, to Noah Shep- 

perd. 

Simoii2 Fitch (Ebenezeri) b. in 1751, m. Dec. 21, 1773, Bathsheba, 
dau. of Caleb, Jr., and Zerviah (Case) Huntington, b. in Lebanon, 
Conn., Dec. 12, 1750. He lived at Wall-Brook, Horton, and d. there 
in 1824. Children : 

i Simon, m. Jan. 14, 1810, Sophia Henrietta, dau. of Judge 
Elisha and Margaret (Eatchford) DeWolf, and d, 
in 1867, aged 84 years. His wife d. Feb. 20, 1871, 
aged 82. Children: James Eatchford, M. D., b. 
Jan. 14, 1811; Margaret Ann, b. June 16, 1812, 
m. to Thomas Crane; Lydia Kirtland, b. June 16, 
1814, m. to John William Barss; Amelia Maria, b. 
May 13, 1816 ; Simon 3d, M. D., b. Jan. 2, 1820; 
Elizabeth DeWolf, b. Aug. 28, 1822, d. April 26, 
1823; Elisha DeWolf, b. Sept. 2, 1825, d. young; 
Mary Sophia, b. June 24, 1827, m. to Eev. Dr. 
Stephen William DeBlois, D. D., John, b. Aug. 2, 
1832, d. young. For Simon Fitch, 3rd, M. D., see 
Personal Sketches. 
ii Ebenezer, d. young. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 665 

iii Irene, b. Sept. 6, 1774, d. unm. 

iv Zerviah, b. May 21, 1776, in Cornwallis, m. to Rev. Theo- 
dore Seth Harding. See the Harding Family. 
V Bathsheba, m. to Col. Samuel Henry Bishop,, 
vi Lydia, m. to James Brown. 
vii Ann, d. young. 
The order of these children is not known, 

Ebenezer,2 Jr., Fitch (Ebenezeri), m. Dec. 18, 1781, Abigail, dau. 
of Timothy and Mercy (Harding) Bishop, b. April 3, 1763. He set- 
tled in Wilmot. Children: Eunice, b. Feb. 13, 1783; Samuel, b. 
April 5, 1785 ; Mercy, b. Jan. 21, 1787 ; Amelia, b. March 31, 1789, m. 
to William, son of Judge Elisha DeWolf ; Ebenezer 3d, b. Jan. 10, 
1791 ; Elizabeth, b. April 12, 1793 ; George Puller, b. Feb. 22, 1795 ; 
Leonard, b. March 22, 1798 ; Elisha, b. Jan. 26, 1801. 

Prederick2 Pitch (Ebenezer^), m. (1) Dee. 27, 1785, Rachel, dau. 
of Capt. William and Jemima (Calkin) Bishop, b. Sept. 15, 1763. 

He m. (2), Nov. 4, 1810, Mary Parker, (3), , His home was in 

Canaan, Horton. Children, by 1st wife: Lydia, b. June 29, 1787; 
Samuel B., b. July 26, 1789; Desiah, b. March 25, 1792; William, 
b. July 4, 1794; Aaron, b. Nov. 13, 1796; Irene, b. May 5, 1799; 
Jemima Ann, b. Aug. 28, 1801 ; Edward, b. Dee. 2, 1803 ; Rachel, b. 
April 4, 1808. 

At some period, we do not know when, an Otis Fitch of Horton 
m. an Ann Manning of Falmouth. 



THE FORSYTH FAMILY 

The Forsyth family, of Scottish ancestry, from the first a prom- 
inent family in Horton, must have been well known in Eastern 
Conn,, for a good while before the migration to Nova Scotia. The 
King's County family was founded by Gilbert^ Forsyth, who 
was probably a son of James Forsyth of Groton, Conn., for Mary 
Forsyth, who was m. 1st to Ichabod Avery, 2nd, July 16, 1751, to 
Col. John Bishop, and with her 2nd husband came to Horton, was a 
daughter of James Forsyth of Groton. 

Children of Gilbert Forsyth: 



666 KING'S COUNTY 

i Jason, m. in Horton, Dee. 30, 1773, Mary Anderson, and 
had children: Enoch, b. Oct. 24, 1774, m. Hannah 
Bishop, b. June 8, 1780; Mary, b. Aug. 16, 1776; 
Elijah, b. Sept. 6, 1778; James, b. March 5, 1781; 
Caleb, b. Aug. 12, 1783, (m. Feb. 23, 1809, Charlotte, 
dau. of Samuel W., and Sarah (Rand) Beckwith, and 
had children: Mary Eliza; Elijah Nelson; Rebecca 
Julia; Nancy Matilda); Gilbert, b. Jan. 5, 1786; 
Jason, b. April 3, 1788; Rebecca, b. Sept. 14, 
1791; John, b. Nov. 6, 1793. 

ii Gilbert, Jr., m. (1) March 13, 1777, Ruth, dau. of Nathan 
Kennie, who d. April 26, 1782, (2) May 1, 1783, 
Mary Coldwell. By his 1st wife had children : James, 
b. Jan. 3, 1778; Nancy, b. Nov. 29, 1779; Ruth, b. 
Feb. 27, 1782. 

iii Caleb, b. probably in 1756, m. May 9, 1782, Eunice, dau. 
of Jehiel and Phebe (Cobb) DeWolf, and had 
children: John, b. Aug. 2, 1785; Elizabeth, b. 
Dec. 19, 1787; Eunice, b. 1792; Andrew, b. July 2, 
1795; James. Caleb^, d. Jan. 4, 1816, aged 59; his 
wife, Eunice, d. Feb. 23, 1819, aged 53. The Forsyth 
family has undoubtedly an interesting Scottish 
pedigree. 



FOX FAMILY 

There seem to have been two distinct Fox families in Cornwallis. 
Of the well known Connecticut Fox family, were James^ Fox and 
his wife Grace, possibly from New London. Children: 

i Oliver, m. May 9, 1776, Amy, dau. of Peter and Rhoda 
(Schofield) Wickwire, b. in New London, Sept. 5, 
1756. Children: James, b. Feb. 10, 1777; Betty, 
b. Nov. 4, 1779; John, b. Nov. 24, 1781; Anna, b. 
Oct. 12, 1783; Grace, b. Oct. ,12, 1786; Rhoda, b. 
April 20, 1788; Lucilla, Simeon, and Euphemia, 
probably triplets, and all b. April 5, 1800; Jemima, 
b. Dec. 15, 1801. 

ii Betty, d. in Cornwallis Jan. 7, 1768 or 9. 

iii Benjiamin, m. Dec. 28, 1785, Hannah, dau. of Major 
Samuel and Abigail (Leffingwell) Starr, b. Nov. 20, 
1752, and had 1 child, Eunice, b. Dec. 2, 1787, m. to 
James Woodworth. Benjamin Fox, m. (2) April 3, 
1794, Sarah, dau. of Benjamin and Sarah Wiggins, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 667 

and had children: Benjamin, b. Jan. 19, 1795; 

Hannah, b. Feb. 19, 1796; Mary, b. June 24, 1798; 

Betsey, b. Oct. 10, 1799 ; George, b. Dee. 1, 1805. 
iv Simeon, m. Dec. 13, 1798, Upjiemia, dau, of Colin and 

Jemima Brymer, Children: Amelia, b. April 15, 

1800 ; Jemima, b. Dec. 15, 1801. 
V Phebe, b. June 20, 1769, in Cornwallis. 

In 1786 there were in Cornwallis, heads of families, Benjamin, 

Oliver, and Simeon Fox, and in addition, Cornelius Fox, of whom 

as follows: 
Cornelius^ Fox, according to the Cleveland Genealogy, was b. in 

County Cork, Ireland, in 1745, and came out, probably as S. P. G. 

Schoolmaster, to Sydney, C. B., in 1763. In 1772 he gave up the 

Grammar school in Sydney and removed as S. P. G. Schoolmaster 

to Cornwallis. There he remained until 1797, when he returned to 

Sydney to teach again in Cape Breton. He m. (1) in Cornwallis, 

April 15, 1776, Elizabeth, dau. of Joseph and Mary ( ) 

Congdon, and by her had children: Peter, b. March 2, 1777; 

Martin, b. Sept. 12, 1779 ; James, b. April 24, 178—, d. young. He 

m. (2) May 16, 1787, Olive, dau. of Benjamin and Mary (Elderkin) 

Cleveland, b. Feb. 23, 1763, and by her had children given further 

on. As the first S. P. G. Schoolmaster in Cornwallis, June 18, 1782, 

the Governor, Sir Andrew Snape Hamond, granted him a license to 

" occupy and possess that lot of land called the School Lot, in the 

Township of Cornwallis, containing four hundred acres, so long as 

he shall continue to be employed as schoolmaster by the Society in 

England for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts." From the 

S. P. G. reports we learn that in 1816, "disabled by severe illness". 

he was recommended to the Society's bounty as a very old servant 

of the Society, but it is elsewhere recorded that he d. in Cornwallis, 

Aug. 29, 1815. He was buried in Fox Hill churchyard. His 2nd 

wife, Olive, d. at Bridgetown., Annapolis county, Nov. 21, 1856. 

Children by second marriage : 

i James Charles, b. April 24, 1788, in Cornwallis, became 
a lieut. R. N., but returned to Cornwallis in 1819, 
taught school there till 1839, when he was appointed 
keeper of the light-house newly erected at Yarmouth 
Harbour. He m. Feb. 15, 1813, Elizabeth, dau. of 



668 KING'S COUNTY 

Thomas and Sarah (Yiekerman) ,Smithson, b. in 
Yorkshire, Eng., June 11, 1797, d. Dee. 25, 1869. 

ii John, b. May 23, bap. Dee. 16, 1793, in Cornwallis, be- 
came a surgeon E. N., and m. at New Glasgow, N. S., 
June 2, 1842, Agnes, dau. of James and Mary 
(Ritchie) Barry. He practised as a physician at 
Wolfville, Windsor, and Halifax. He also became 
light-house keeper at Yarmouth, N. S. He is spoken 
of as **an author and poet." 

iii Charles James, b. March 19, 1798, in Sydney, C. B., in 
July 13, 1846, at Barrington, N. S., Mary Coffin. 
He was a merchant and teacher at Bridgetown, N. S. 

iv Cornelius Cleveland, b. Oct. 10, 1804, bap. June 30, 1805, in 
Cornwallis, d. at Grand Pre, Horton, unm., April 28, 
1877. 



THE PULLER FAMILY 

The Fuller family of King's County is descended from Edward 
Fuller of the Mayflower, and was founded by Nathan^ Fuller, 
Sr. (Thomas, John, Samuel, Edward), a grantee in Horton, who was 

b. in East Haddam, Conn., April 20, 1719, and m. (1) Abigail . 

who d. about 1750, (2) . Children by 1st mai*riage : 

i Nathan, Jr., b. Oct. 23, 1740, like his father a grantee 

in Horton, m. in Horton, July 6, 1779, Jane Jordan, 

and had children, the eldest of whom was Abigail, 

b. April 6, 1780. 
ii Israel, b. March 8, 1749, m. in Horton, Jan. 30, 1776, 

Eunice Williams, and had children: Daniel, b. May 

31, 177; Jedediah, b. Oct. 16, 1779. 
iii EHhu, b. Aug. 11, 1750, m. in Horton, Sept. 23, 1774, Amy 

Pride. Children: Oliver, b. in July, and d. Aug. 15, 

1775; William, b. March 4, 1777; Margaret, b. Nov. 

26, 1779; Thomas, b. June 23, 1782; Elihu, b. Sept. 

4, 1785 ; Oliver, b. March 18, 1788 ; Olive, b. Feb. 24, 

1792. 

Other records of this family in Horton are: Elisha Fuller 
m. in Horton, March 31, 1774, Elizabeth Bill, whose ancestry we 
do not know. They had children : John, b. July 18, 1775 ; Elisha, 
Jr., b. Aug. 4, 1777, d. March 2, 1778; Elizabeth, b. Jan. 18, 1780; 



FAMILY SKETCHES 669 

Susanna, b. July 29, 1782; Elisha, Jr., b. Dec. 14, 1784; Olive; 
James, b. Jan. 5, 1790; Noah Garrison, b. Jan. 4, 1793; Eliphalet 
Gilbert, b. April 22, 1795 ; Stephen Bill, b. July 11, 1798. Timothy 

Fuller, m. . Children: Richard, b. ; Lavinia, b. Nov. 

18, 1783; Samuel, b. Aug. 30, 1788; Timothy, b. June 13, 1791. 
William Fuller m. Oct. 24, 1811, Mrs. Ann Manning, and had 
a son John, b. Oct. 17, 1812. David Fuller m. Sept. 10, 1812, 
Mary Cray. Children: Lavinia, b. Sept. 23, 1813; Rebecca, b. 
Aug. 23, 1815; Sophronia, b. Oct. 31, 1817; Matilda, b. Nov, 4, 
Amelia Bishop, and had children: George Newcomb, b. April 27, 
1819 ; Martha, b. Oct. 18, 1821. James Fuller m. April 2, 1816, 
1818 ; Elias James, b. Oct. 31, 1821. Stephen B. Fuller, m. Feb. 20, 
1822, Martha Lockhart, and had children. 

The Amos Fuller vrho was one of a ^^tmmittee sent from Conn, 
to view the Minas lands, was probably s^ of Benjamin, of Lebanon, 
Conn., b. April 3, 1721, m. (1) at Hebron, Conn., in his 20th year, 
Margaret Phelps, (2) Mary Taylor. That he received a grant in 
Horton we know, whether he settled there or not we do not know. 
Whether Noah Fuller, who m. in Horton, Nov. 6, 1777, Elizabeth 
Bishop, was Noah, the grantee, or whose son he was, we do not 
know. It is hop^ that the incompleteness of this sketch will 
stimulate the Fuller family to compile a better Genealogy. 

An important representative of the Fuller family today is James 
Newman Fuller, M. D., of Wolfville, who m. in Oct., 1870, Lueilla 
Harris, and has children. 



THE FULLERTON FAMILY 

Of this family we have secured only the following facts: James 
Pullerton m. NTfv. 24, 1791, Jerusha, dau. of Benjamin, Jr., and 
Hannah (Miner) Peck, b. Aug. 29, 1770. They had children born 
in Horton: Elisha Peck, b. Sept. 8, 1792; Hannah, b. March 1, 
1795; Margaret Jane, died March 15, 1796. 



670 KING'S COUNTY 

THE GESNER FAMILY 

The Gesners of Nova Scotia are descended from Hendrick Gesner, 
of German Swiss origin, who settled in New York in 1709. One of 
Hendrick 's sons, John, m. in New York, Famitcha Brauer, of a 
Dutch family, and two of the nine children of this couple, Henry 
and Abraham, twins, born in New Jersey in 1756, obtained eom- 
misions in the King's Orange Rangers, then commanded by Samuel 
Vetch Bayard, and came to Nova Scotia, as Loyalists, in 1783. A 
biographical sketch of Major Abraham will be found in the history 
of Annapolis, he married, in Cornwallis, June 11, 1787, Elizabeth, 
daughter of John and Frances (Congdon) Steadman (an aunt of 
Mrs. Elisha Eaton, Jr.,) and had children: Hannah, born in Corn- 
wallis, Sept. 28, 1^87, and eleven others, born probably in 
Annapolis county, (CalnJiaBp. 515, 516). 

Henry^ Gesner, twin ^Pother of Abraham, m. in Cornwallis, 
May 4, 1786, Sarah, dau. of David and Rebecca Pineo, and died in 
1850. Children: 

i Rebecca, b. May 27, 1787, m. Sept. 11, 1810, to Elkanah, 

son of Pern and Sarah Terry, 
ii John Henry, b. March 20, 1789, m. Dec. 2, 1818, Mary 

Lydia, dau. of Joshua and EstigK Chase, 
iii Elizabeth, b. March 11, 1791, m. M^ 11, 1815, to Hon 

Samuel Chipman, M. L. C. 
iv David Henry, b. March 7, 1793. # 

V Famicha, b. March 27, 1795, m. in 1821, to Benjamin 

Cossitt. 
vi Abraham, M. D., b. May 2, 1797, m. Jan. 31, 1822, Ilfcriet, 

dau. of Isaac "Webster, M. D., and his wife Prudence 

(Bentley), of Kentville, b. July 24, 1801. 
vii Gibbs Henry, b. July 1, 1799. 
viii Sarah, b. Feb. 21, 1802, m. to Dr. Carr. 
ix Henry, Jr., b. April 17, 1804, m. Nov. 23, 1828, Catherine, 

dau. of James and Margaret (Hosterman) Kidston, 

bap. Jan. 31, 1800. Child: Margaret Ann Kidston, 

b. Aug. 25, bap. Oct. 8, 1829, m. to Edmund Jones 

Webister of Kentville. 
X Ann Maria, b. Sept. 28, 1806, m. to Edward Hamilton, of 

Horton. 
xi Lavinia Caroline, b. May 22, 1809. 
xii Charlotte Amelia, b. Sept. 8, 1813, m. to Samuel Barnaby. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 671 

These children, except the last, were all baptized in St. John's 
Parish, Cornwallis, by Rev. Robert Norris, Sept. 11, 1810. 

On the Cornwallis Town Book is a record of the birth of David 
Gesner, son of John and Anne, b. June 19, 1787, but we do not 

know who he was. 



THE GILLETT FAMILY 

CaJebi GiUett, a son of Samuel and Abigail Gillett, of probably 

Colchester, Conn., was b. Sept. 3, 1739, and m. Mary . He 

received a grant in Cornwallis in 1764, and had children recorded in 
Cornwallis : Eliphal, b. Oct. 21, 1763 ; Betsey, b. Sept. 16, 1765 ; 
Marvin b. Oct. 2, 1767 ; Miriam, b. Feb. 4, 1771. 



LmLi 



THE GILPIN FAMILY 

The Gilpin family long represented in Aylesford, by the Rev. 
Edwin Gilpin, Rector of St. Mary's Church, was transplanted to 
Nova Scotia from Newport, R. I., by John Bernard^ Gilpin, eldest 
son of the Rev. William Gilpin, Vicar of Boldre, and his wife 
Margaret (Gilpin), born at Cheam, Surrey, England, July 16, 
1754, who in 1783 * ettled in Pennsylvania, on the banks of the 
Delaware, and July 14, 1784, m. (1) at Philadelphia, Ann Woodrop 
Sims, dau. ot Joseph and Ann Sims, of Phila, In 1803 John 
Bernard Gilpin went to Newport, R. I., where for thirty years he 
serve# as British Vice Consul. In 1833 he retired on a pension 
and removed to Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, where he d. May 11, 
1851. He m. (2) in Newport, Mary E., dau. of Capt. John Miller 
(see Annals of Trinity Church, Newport, p. 239, and Newport Vital 
Records), who d. in Newport, and was buried in Trinity church- 
yard, June 27, 1814, aged 33. By his first marriage John Bernard 
Gilpin had children: William, b. June 11, 1786, d. in 1880; 
Elizabeth Sims, b. March 1, d. March 14, 1789; Bernard, b. March 
4, 1790, d. of yellow fever in Jamaica, W. I. ; Rev. Edwin, b. Aug. 8, 
1792, bapt. by Bishop White of Pa.; Joseph Sims, b. Jan. 12, 
1794, a midshipman R. N., was killed in Basque Road, in action. 



672 KING'S COUNTY 

in 1811 J Rev. Alfred, b. Oct. 19, 1795, grad. at King's College, 

Windsor, N. S., in 1822, m. (1) Wiggins, of St. John, N. B., 

(2) Mrs. Charlotte (Leavitt) Seely, of Charlotte county, N. B., 
and Weymouth, N. S., (3) Ellen Guinness; Anne Woodrop Sims, b. 
Jan. 6, 1797, d. Dee. 23, 1875. By his 2nd marriage he had: 
EUzabeth Miller, b. May 14, 1804, d. Feb. 12, 1892 ; Hon. William, 
b. Oct. 27, 1806; Judge Henry Addington, b. May 13, 1808; John 
Bernard, M. D., F. R. S. C, b. Sept. 4, 1810; Charles Baring, 
b. Aug. 3, 1812; Susan Baring, b. June 14, 1814, m. to Rev. William 
Irving Godfrey. 

Rev. Edwin2 Gilpin (John Bernard^), b. Aug. 8, 1792, at Lower 
Dublin, Penn., and bap., by Bishop White, was admitted to King's 
College, Nova Scotia, in 1814, but did not graduate. In 1816 he 
was ordained and settled over the parish of St, Mary's, Aylesford, 
where he remained until 1832. In the latter year he became Rector 
of St. Luke's Church, Annapolis Royal, and there he staid for 28 
years, dying Sept. 17, 1860. On a memorial window in St. Luke's 
Church, Annapolis, is the following inscription; " In memory of 
the Rev. Edwin Gilpin, for 28 years Rector of this Parish. Died 
September 17, 1860, aged 69 years." At Annapolis, Mr, Gilpin 
also performed the duties of Garrison Chaplain, being the last clergy- 
man there to officiate in that capacity. The Rev. Edwin Gilpin m. (1) 
Oct. 29, 1817, Eliza, daughter of John and Hesdaliah (Cutler) 
Wiswall, and grand-daughter of the noted Loyalist clergyman, Rev. 
John Wiswall. She died at Aylesford, July 5, 1823, in h^r 27th 
year, and her husband m. (2), in Trinity Parish, Newport, R. I. 
(Rev, Salmon Wheaton then Rector), June 15, 1827, Gertrude 
Aleph, eldest dau. Edward and Janet (Parker) Brinley, of Newport, 
b. May 26, 1794, d. Jan. 17, 1845. Children by 1st marriage: 
Eliza, b. Dec. 30, 1819, m. to Rev. Arthur W, Millidge ; Rev. Dean 
Edwin, Jr., b. June 10, 1821, Ann, b. Feb. 19, 1823, m. in 1847, 
to Rev. Jacob Jehosaphat Salter Mountain, D. D. Children by 2nd 
marriage: Alfred, b. May 13, il828, grad, at King's College in 
1848, d, Aug. 15, 1853, while a student of medicine at Edinburgh; 
Gertrude Aleph, b. Dec. 20, 1830, d. April 19, 1886, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 673 

Rev. Edwin^ Gilpin, Jr., D. D. (Rev. Edwin^ John Bemard^), 
for many years Dean of the Cathedral at Halifax, b. June 10, 1821, 
m. in 1849, Amelia Mackay, 5th dau. of Hon. Judge Thomas Chand- 
ler Haliburton, and his 1st wife, Louisa (Neville), bap. at Windsor, 
N. S., June 17, 1830, d. at Halifax, Jan. 14, 1902. Dean Gilpin d. 
Dec. 29, 1906. His children were : Edwin, 3d, C. E., D. Sc, Fellow 
of the Geological Society of London, Companion of the Imperial 
Service Order, &c., b. Oct. 28, 1850, m. June 29, 1865, Florence 
Ellen, dau. of Lewis Johnstone, Jr., M. D., and his wife, Anna 
Sneden (Thorne) ; John Bernard, b. Jan. 3, d. Jan. 20, 1853; Ealph; 
Emma Neville; Gertrude Amelia, m. to Rev. Charles Croucher, of 
Yale, B. C; Ranulph Robert, b. Nov. 9, 1861; Alfred Edwin 
Haliburton-Gilpin, b. Sept. 22, 1864, m. March 7, 1905, Adelaide 
Caroline Lucy Forbes, of Southfield, Jamaica, W. I. ; Arthur Fobin, 
b. March 31, 1864, Lieut. H. M. Wiltshire Regt., d. at Dagshie, 
India, Oct. 17, 1907. 



THE GORE FAMILY 

Moses^ Gore, a 1st cousin of John Gore, father of Christopher 
Gore, Governor of Massachusetts, was b. in Roxbury, Mass., Sept. 
23, 1709, in 1715-19 removed to Groton, Conn., and May 27, 1740, m. 
there. Desire Burris of Groton. After their marriage the Gores 
lived successively in Groton, Preston, and Norwich, but in 1761 
they came to Cornwallis, where they spent the rest of their lives. 
The dates of their deaths are not known to us. Children. 

i Desire, b. Sept. 20, 1740, in Groton, Conn., m. Dec. 1, 

1760, to James Ratchford. See Ratchford Family. 
ii Hannah, b. Sept. 1, 1741, in Preston, d. in Cornwallis, 

April 19, 1763. 
iii Mercy, b. Feb. 10, 1743, in Preston, m. (1) in the spring 
of 1769, to Simon Newcomb, (2) Dee. 18, 1783, to 
Timothy Bishop, 
iv Moses, Jr., b. May 2, 1744, m. Mary Newcomb. 
V Lydia, b. March 7, 1745-6, d. July 5, 1747. 
vi Samuel, b. Nov. 1, 1747, m. April 17, 1793, Acksah, dau. 
of Benjamin and Hannah Kinsman, b. Oct. 24, 1769, 
d. June 1, 1823, and lived in Cornwallis. They had 



674 KING'S COUNTY 

one child, John, b. Nov. 18, 1800, m. March 2, 1826, 
Asenath, dau. of Joseph and Ursula Crowell, b, in 
N. J., Nov. 2 1808, and had 9 children; they lived 
at Fonthill, Canada. 

vii Abel, b. Nov. 12, 1749, m. Elizabeth E. Smith. He was 
wrecked at sea in 1798. 

viii Ebenezer. 

ix James Asa. 

IX Cap,t. John, b. in 1760 d. at Staten Island, N. Y., unm., 
Feb. 19, 1844. 
Of these children, Moses, Jr., Lydia, Samuel, and Abel were b, in 
Norwich, Capt. John was b. in Groton. 

Moses2 Gore, Jr., (Moses^), b. in Norwich, Conn., May 2, 1744, 
m. in Cornwallis, Jan. 26, 1769, Mary, dau. of Simon and Jane 
Neweomb, b. March 1, 1752. Both died before the marriage of 
their dau. Desire in 1797. Children : 

i Sarah, b. April 5, 1770, m. March 31, 1790, to Thomas 

Rand, and d. April 5, 1855. 
ii Hannah, b. March 31, 1773, m. July 21, 1802, to Roland 

Morton, 
iii Mary, b. Jan. 29, 1778, m. Feb. 25, 1804, to Joseph Starr, of 

Halifax. See Second ^tarr Family, 
iv Desire, b. May 23, 1780, on Dec. 23, 1797, to Col. John 

Starr, of Halifax. See Second Starr Family. 
V Mercy, b. May 7, 1872, d. young. 



THE GRAHAM FAMILY. 
The Rev. Hugh^ Graham, the first Presbyterian pastor of the 
Cornwallis Congregationalist Church, m. (1) in Scotland, Elizabeth 
Brown, (2) in Cornwallis, Dec. 15, 1791, Rev. Mr. Cock of Truro, 
officiating, Elizabeth, dau. of James Whidden, b. in New England. 
Children: Hugh, b. Nov. 21, 1792; John Whidden, b. Feb. 22, 1795; 
Elizabeth, b. June 18, 1798. 



THE GRAVES FAMILY 

Elias Graves, whose origin we have not been able to discover, 
received a grant of 400 acres in Aylesford, March 23, 1810. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 675 

Whether it was he or his son whose record we next give we do 
not know, nor do we know whether William and Williard, whose 
families we record, were sons of the grantee, or not. Most of the 
following record is taken from Aylesford Town Book. 

Ellas Graves, m. (See History of Annapolis) Miriam, dan. of 
Major Nathaniel and Anna (Hardy) Parker, b. in 1776, and had 
children: Anna, b. Oct. 8, 1798; Elias, Jr., b. April 2, 1801; 
Horatio Nelson, b. Feb. 2, 1806 ; Amy Salome, b. Oct. 8, 1811 ; 
Hepzibah Charlotte, b. April 12, 1813. Either this Elias or his 
son, Elias, Jr., m. Feb. 25, 1824, Ann Wallace, and had children: 
Armauella Matilda, b. Dec. 6, 1824 ; John Wallace, b. Nov. 29, 1825 ; 
Charles William, b. Feb. 24, 1828; Elias Evans, b. Dee. 4, 1831; 
Thomson PhiUips, b. April 2, 1833 ; Herbert W. C, b. Sept. 20, 1835 ; 
Mary P., b. Feb. 24, 1838. 

William Graves m. Jan. 9, 1816, Elizabeth Parker. Witnesses, 
Robert H. and Joseph Crane. Children: Elias Samnel, b. Oct. 19, 
1816 ; Mary Ann, b. March 4, 1819 ; Beriah Bent, b. March 31, 1821 ; 
John Parker, b. May 28, 1823; James Harvey, b. May 25, 1825; 
Nathan Welsley, b. Jan. 22, 1828, d. May 5, 1830; Love, b. Jan. 8, 
1831 ; William Huston, b. Feb. 6, 1834 ; Elizabeth Salome, b. Feb. 20, 
1836. Of these, the second, Mary Ann, was m. in 1839, to Enoch 
Leander Cogswell. 

WiUard Graves, m. Feb. 26, 1818, Elizabeth, dau. of Samuel and 
Sarah (Marshall) Gates, b. July 16, 1799. Children: Samuel, b. Jan. 
28, 1820 ; Sarah Ann, b. Dec. 10, 1821 ; Lavinia Elizabeth, b. Feb. 26, 
1823 ; Amoret Salome, b. April 3, 1825 ; Miriam S., b. March 1, 1827 ; 
Elias, b. Jan. 29, 1829; Charlotte M., b. Aug. 24, 1831; Mary Eve- 
line, b. March 5, 1832; WiUard Judson, b. Jan. 8, 1833; Letitia 
Maria, b. Nov. 30, 1837. 

We regret that we are not able to give a fuller sketch of this 
family. One of its leading members to-day is Wallace Graves, of 
Kingston, King's County. 



676 KING'S COUNTY 

THE HALIBURTON FAMILY 

As early as 1766 the Haliburton family (name spelled with one 1) 
was represented in King's County, and for many years, to the pres- 
ent, members of it have lived in the county. Andrew Haliburton, b. 
in Scotland, in early life came to Boston and there m. Feb. 23, 1719, 
Naomi or Amy Figg, who was probably the widow of John Figg. 
He m. (2) Dec. 18, 1730, Abigail, dau. of Job and Mary (Little) 
Otis, of Scituate, b. in 1703, a sister of Dr. Ephraim Otis, who m. 
Rachel Hersey, of Hingham. In Boston Mr. Haliburton acquired 
some property, but for some reason, for a short time he and his 2nd 
wife lived in Jamaica, W. I. There Mr. Haliburton died, his widow, 
Abigail, then returning to Boston. Unfortunately, however, before 
long, her house, which stood at the southwest corner of Washington 
and Winter streets, with all that it contained, was burned, and she 
removed to Newport, R. I. Her family consisted, it is said, of her 
own four children, a daughter of her late husband by a former 
wife, and a daughter of that wife by a former husband. Oct. 18, 
1756, she was m. (2) as his 2nd wife, to Edward Ellis, M. D,, who 
had been Surgeon-General of the Massachusetts troops at Louisburg, 
and after the reduction of that fortress had received a grant of 
land at Windsor, N. S. Probably in 1760 or '61, the EUises re- 
moved to Windsor, and there after a few years Mr. Ellis died. The 
children of Andrew Haliburton were as follows : 

By first marriage : 

i William, bap. July 17, 1724, at King's Chapel, Boston, 

prob. d. young, 
ii Rooksby or Rusby, bap, Jan. 28, 1725, at King's Chapel^ 

prob. d. unm. March 14, 1801, aged 75. She was 

sponsor at the bap. of a child at King's Chapel, May 

17, 1749. 
By second marriage : 

iii Abigail, m. (1) in Trinity Parish, Newport, July 24, 1754, 
to Frederick Hamilton (perhaps a son of Frederick 
Hamilton, who m. at King's Chapel, May 29, 1734, 
Mary Jeffries), (2) to Jacob Sheaf e, widower, a 
prominent merchant of Portsmouth, N. H., b. in 1715, 
m. (1) July 24, 1740, Hannah Seavy, b. in 1719, d. at 
Portsmouth, Nov. 12, 1773 ; he d. June 26, 1791. See 



FAMILY SKETCHES 677 

Wentworth Genealogy, Vol. 2, P. 307. Mrs. Abigail 
Sheafe made her will July 5, 1803. In it she gives 
her son-in-law, James Sheafe, Esq., a certain piece of 
land, or house lot, in Newport, K. I,, which had been 
willed to her by her 1st husband, Frederick Hamil- 
ton. To her nephew, Andrew Haliburton, she wills 
all her books and plates, except one "silver cann." 
She mentions, also, her sister, Priscilla Card. 

iv Isabella, bap. Oct. 3, 1736, in Christ Church Parish, Boston. 

V Priscilla, bap. April 30, 1738, in Christ Church Parish, m. 

(1) in Newport, R. I., July 24, 1754, to Eobert Pate, 

(2) to Jonathan Card, of NevsTport. 

vi William, b. April 16, 1739, bap. in King's Chapel Parish. 
May 20, 1739, m. Susanna Otis. 

vii George, bap. Jan. 23, 1742, in King's Chapel Parish. A 
George Haliburton, we can hardly doubt this George, 
m, in Horton, King's County, Sept. 27, 1766, Ann 
Avery (See sketch of the Conn. Avery family). He 
appears in the first census of King's County after the 
Conn, planters came as having 5 in family, 1 man, 1 
woman, 2 boys, and 1 girl. It is probably he who be- 
tween 1769 and 1774 acted as S. P. G. schoolmaster 
at Windsor and Newport. 

William^ Haliburton (Andrew), b. in Boston, April 16, bap. in 
King's Chapel Parish, May 20, 1739, m. April 9, 1761, his first 
cousin, Susanna, dau. of Dr. Ephraim and Eachel (Hersey) Otis, b. 
in Scituate, Mass., April 15, 1738. In 1761 he and his wife left 
Boston for Halifax, and then went on to Hants county, where they 
settled and where Mr. Haliburton for a while farmed, then be- 
gan the study of law. As a lawyer he lived in the village of Wind- 
sor, where for some years, until his death, he was Judge of Probate. 
He d. in Windsor, in Feb., 1817. Rachel Otis, a sister of Mrs. Hali- 
burton, was m. at Windsor, March 16, 1769, to Benjamin DeWolf, 
Children : 

i WiUiam, b. Sept. 2, 1762, d. April 16, 1764. 

ii Susana Hamilton, b. May 16, 1765. 

iii William Hersey Otis, b. Sept. 3, 1767, m. (1) Lucy Grant, 

(2) Mrs. Susanna (Francklin) Davis, 
iv Charlotte, b. Sept. 20, 1770. 

v Abigail, b. June 15, 1773, m. in Boston, Aug. 2, 1801, to 
Samuel Fales, Esq., merchant and president of the 
Union Bank of Boston, b. in Bristol, R. I., Aug. 29, 



678 KING'S COUNTY 

1775, d. Aug. 6, 1848. She d. Nov. 29, 1839. Chil- 
dren: Lucy Ann Charlotte Augusta, bap. (King's 
Chapel) Feb. 13, 1803; Samuel Bradford, bap. June 
24, 1804 ; Susanna Maria, bap. Dee. 19, 1809 ; Frances 
Maria, bap. April 28, 1811; Eliza Ann, bap. Oct. 31, 
1813 ; Haliburton, bap. March 5, 1815. 

vi John Gustavus, b. Jan. 23, 1775. 

vii George Mordaunt, b. June 30, 1777, m. Loupe, (2) in 

Halifax, July 3, 1810, Maria Cunningham Peeples. 
For some years Mr. Haliburton was in business in 
Halifax at the corner of HoUis and Sackville streets, 
but he d. in Boston. He had several children, of 
whom, by his 2nd wife, were : John Gustavus Peeples, 
bap. in St. Matthew's Parish, Halifax, May 26, 1811; 
Thomas Andrew, bap. there March 19, 1815. 

William Hersey Otis^ Haliburton (William^, Andrew), b. Sept. 
3, 1767, m. (1) Lucy, dau. of Major Alexander and Sarah (Kent) 
Grant, formerly of New York (Major Grant was a Loyalist.) Mrs. 
Lucy Haliburton d. about three years after her marriage, leaving an 
only child, Hon. Judge Thomas Chandler Haliburton. Her hus- 
band m. (2) probably early in 1804, Susanna (Francklin) Davis, 2nd 
dau. of the Hon. Michael Francklin of Windsor, and widow of Ben- 
jamin Davis, of Pennsylvania. 

Hon. Judge Thomas Chandler Haliburton, D. C. L., (William Her- 
sey Otis^, William^ , Andrew^), the famous author of **Sam Slick," 
b. at Windsor, Dec. 17, 1796, grad. at King's College, Windsor, in 
1815, and was called to the N. S. Bar in 1820. In 1829 he was made 
a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas (he has frequently been 
described as Chief Justice of the Inferior Court, or Court of Com- 
mon Pleas, this is incorrect, there were three Districts in the 
Province, each with its Court of Common Pleas, but none of these 
judges had priority or had the title of chief all were on equal foot- 
ing), and in 1841 a Judge of the Supreme Court of the Province. 
In 1856 he took up his residence in England, and from 1859 to 1865, 
sat in Parliament for Launeeston, Cornwall. As the "Pioneer Amer- 
ican Humorist," Judge Haliburton will always be remembered in 
American literature. He m. (1) in 1816, Louisa, only dau. of Capt. 
Lawrence Neville, 19th Light Dragoons, (2) in 1856, Sarah Harriet, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 679 

widow of Edward Hosier Williams, of Eaton-Mascott, Shrewsbury 
Eng., by whom he had no children. Children : Susanna Lucy Anne 
bap. at Windsor, June 2, 1817, m. in 1848 to Judge John W. Weldon 
of N. B. ; William Neville, bap. Dec. 1, 1819; Thomas and Lewis 
twins, bap. Jan. 18, 1821 ; Augusta Louisa Neville, bap. July 3, 1823 
m. to Alexander Fowsden Haliburton (an Englishman), of Baddeck 
C. B., and d. at Torquay, Devon, Oct. 11, 1891; Laura Charlotte 
bap. at Annapolis Eoyal, Sept. 8, 1824, m. in Dec, 1851, to William 
2d son of Sir Samuel and Susan (Duffus) Cunard, b. in April, 1825 
WiUiam Frederic NeviUe, bap, Dec. 1, 1826, buried April 11, 1827 
Emma Maria, bap. Oct. 18, 1828, m. to Eev. J. Bainbridge Smith 
Amelia Mackay, bap. at Windsor, June 17, 1830, m. in 1849, to the 
Eev. Dean Edwin Gilpin, of Halifax (see the Gilpin Family) 
Eobert Grant, D. C. L., b. June 3, 1831, bap. March 21, 1832; Arthur 
Lawrence, b. Sept. 26, 1832, bap. at Windsor, July 13, 1833, raised 
to the peerage in 1898. 

Judge Thomas Chandler Haliburton was created a D. C. L, by 
Oxford University in 1858. He d. at Gordon House, Islesworth, 
Middlesex, Aug. 27, 1865. "Haliburton," says the Dictionary of 
National Biography, "was the first writer who used the American 
dialect, and according to Artemas Ward founded the American 
School of Humor." The Dictionary then gives 16 titles of works 
written by him. 

Of his sons, Eobert Grant, D. C. L., a scientist of considerable 
note, d. unm. in 1898 ; Arthur Lawrence, for many years connected 
with the War Office in London, was created C. B. in 1880 ; K. C. B. 
in 1885; G. C. B. in 1897; Baron Haliburton in the Peerage of the 
United Kingdom in 1898. He m. in 1877, Mariana Emily, dau. of 
Leo Schuster, Esq., and widow of Sir William Dickason Clay, Bart. 
Lord Haliburton d. s. p. in 1907. 



THE HALL FAMILY 

Two sons of Abner and Mary (Euss) Hall, of Mansfield, Conn., 
were in King's County. These were Abner Hall, Jr., b. Jan. 
4, 1749, m. in Cornwallis, Dec. 7, 1772, Mary, dau. of Jonathan and 



680 KING'S COUNTY 

Lydia Babeoek. Children: Samuel, b. March 6, 1774; Lydia, b. 
Feb. 2, 1775; James, b. March 6, 1776; Nathan, b. Jan. 27, 1779; 
John, b. March 24, 1781 ; Elizabeth, b. May 19, 1783 ; Mary, b. July 
8, 1785; William, b. July 26, 1787. 

Stephen Hall, b. May 13, 1751, m. Nov. 11, 1772, Alice, dau. 
of Samuel and Annie Brewster. Children : Mary, b. Dec. 24, 1773 ; 
Alice, b. May 1, 1775. See Halls of Yarmouth, in "Halls of New 
England," P. 227. 



THE HAMILTON FAMILY 

The Hamilton family of King's County, founded here in 1761 by 
Jonathan Hamilton, is an important branch of the family founded 
in the State of Maine in 1652 by David Hamilton, probably of the 
Hamiltons of "Westburn, Lanarkshire, Scotland. A son of David, 
Jonas, settled in New London, Conn., as early as 1708, and there m. 
Sept. 9, 1708, Elizabeth, dau. of John and Mary (Tonge) Wickwire, 
a niece of Elizabeth (Tonge) wife of Fitz John "Winthrop, Grovernor 
of Conn, from 1698 until 1707, and an aunt of Capt. Peter Wick- 
wire, founder of the Wickwire family of Cornwallis. Jonas and 
Elizabeth (Wickwire) Hamilton had 8 children, of whom Jonathan, 
the Horton grantee, was the eldest. 

Jonathan^ Hamilton (Jonas, David), son of Jonas and Elizabeth 
(Wickwire) Hamilton, of New London, b. June 17, 1709, bap. June 
25, 1710, (as were also his parents at this date), m. (1) before 

1733, , and had a child Bathsheba, bap. April 15, 1733, and a 

child Lucy, bap. Oct. 27, 1734. He m. (2) July 26, 1736, Elizabeth 
Strickland, who was prob. bap. as an adult, July 14, 1734. He m. 

(3), probably shortly before coming to Horton, Phebe , who in 

Horton bore him : Sarah, b. May 6, 1762, d. young ; and in succession, 
James, Jonathan, Sarah, Catherine, Lavinia. He d. in Horton, Feb. 
24, 1778; his wife Phebe d. July 26, 1786. Jonathan Hamilton is 
said to have been the first High Sheriff of King's County. 

Children of Jonathan Hamilton : 

i Bathsheba, bap. April 15, 1733. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 681 

ii Lucy, bap. Oct. 27, 1734, m. in N. S., but returned to the 

' U. S. 
iii IMary, bap. June 26, 1737. 
iv John, bap. July 15, 1739, m. Elizabeth, dau. of Capt. 

Elisha Lothrop, and returned to the U. S. He had 2 

sons, John and Jonathan, 
V Amos, bap. Oct. 11, 1741. 
vi Samuel, m. July 11, 1771, Anna Davidson, 
vii Elizabeth, m. to Isaac Graves, and d. in Windsor, N. S., 

aged 88. 
viii Phebe, b., it is said by the Bishop Family, Nov. 27, 1737, 

but this seems impossible. Was it not '47 ? She was 

m. as his 2nd wife, to Deacon Peter Bishop. 
ix Anna, m. Aug. 27, 1778, to Nathan DeWolf. 
X Sarah, b. May 6, 1762, d. young, 
xi James, b. Feb. 2, 1764, m. to Nancy Harris, 
xii Jonathan, b. Feb. 10, 1767, returned to the U. S. in 1797. 
xiii Sarah, b. March 24, 1769, m. Feb. 11, 1796, to Samuel 

Grilmore. 
xiv Catherine, m. Nov. 8, 1792, to Stephen Gould. 
XV Lavinia, m. Aug. 28, 1798, to Thomas Griffin Miner. 

James2 Hamilton (Jonathani), b. Feb. 2, 1764, m. Feb. 10, 1796, 
Nancy, dau. of James and Anna (Rathbun) Harris, b. March 16, 
1779. They had children: James Edward, b. Sept. 28, 1797, d. 
March 27, 1879 (buried in St. John's Churchyard, Wolfville) ; 
Sophia, b. April 8, 1799, m. to John, son of Amasa and Eunice (Deni- 
son) Harris; Nancy, b. Jan. 29, 1801, m. to Sherman David Denison; 
Lavinia, b. Nov. 17, 1803, m. to James E. Rathbun; Mary J., b. Oct. 
16, 1805 ; William Thomas, b. Aug. 3, 1807 ; George, b. June 27, 1809, 
m. March 17,1859, Sarah Rebecca, dau. of Handley and Ann (Hoyt) 
Chipman, b. Oct. 22, 1824; Rev. Henry Harris, b. Dee. 18, 1810, a 
priest of the Anglican Church, m. (1) Mary Elizabeth Bayers, who 
d. Sept. 4, 1854, (2) Rosina Calnek, of Bridgetown, Annapolis 
county; Charles Cottnam, M. D., M. P., b. Oct. 13, 1813, m May 
20, 1839, Henrietta, dau. of Joseph and Sarah (Rice) Troop, b. Dee. 
5, 1814, and had children: Henrietta Elizabeth, b. March 24, 1840, 
m. to Robert Rand; Charles William Frederick, M. D., b. April 4, 
1844. A David Hamilton m. in Horton, Aug. 14, 1783, Anna 
Dickson. 



682 KING'S COUNTY 

A Frances Mary Hamilton (perhaps dau. of Jonathan, Jr.) b. Nov. 
30, 1809, was m. in Horton to Leonard Palmeter. 

[An article on the ''Berwick, Me., and Nova Scotia Hamiltons," 
published by the author of this book in the N. E. Hist, and Gen. 
Register for Oct., 1890, has mistakes which should be corrected by 
the facts given in this sketch, which will be found corroborated by 
the Wickwire Genealogy, published in 1909.] 

On the Cornwallis Town Book are the following records: John 
and Elizabeth Hamilton had a son John, b. May 8, 1788. Oliver 
Hamilton, probably a son of Samuel and Anna (Davidson), m. July 
28, 1797, Lavinia, dau. of Thomas and Rebecca Lowden, and had 
children : Ann, b. May 16, 1798 ; Rebecca, b. Sept. 11, 1799 ; Lavinia, 
b. Aug. 23, 1801; Churchill, b. May 19, 1805; Thomas Lowden, b. 
Sept. 9, 1806 ; Sarah, b. May 26, 1808 ; Samuel, b. March 23, 1810 ; 
Asa, b. Dec. 31, 1811 ; Eunice, b. April 4, 1814. 



THE HAMMOND FAMILY 

Archelaus Hammond appears in Cornwallis, among the early 
New England settlers. He may have been a son of "Archelus" 
Hammond, of Rochester, Mass., who, according to the Hammond 
Genealogy was b. Sept. 15, 1709, and m. Dec. 10, 1729, Elizabeth 
Weeks, but whose children are not given. The wife of Archelaus 
Hammond, of Cornwallis, was Jerusha (perhaps Lothrop), and they 
had children, b. in Cornwallis: 

1 Claratha, (name uncertain), b. Oct. 28, 1762. 

ii Lothrop, b. April 10, 1765. 

iii Sarah, b. Feb. 2, 1767. 

iv Archelaus, Jr., b. May 9, 1769. 

V Jerusha, b. Sept. 26, 1771. 

Archelaus and Jonathan Hammond were Massachusetts soldiers 
at Halifax in 1759. They were at Piziquid June 2, 1760. Archelaus 
removed from Cornwallis to Machias, Me. See N. E. Hist, and Gen. 
Register, Vol. 28. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 683 

FIRST HARDING FAMILY 

The earliest Horton Harding family were descended from 
Stephen Harding, who is first certainly heard of in Providence, 
R. I., in 1669 ; the Harding family to which Rev. Theodore Seth Hard- 
ing belonged is from a different ancestor. The Genealogy of the 
R. I. and Conn. Hardings has never been compiled, but in Austin's 
Genealogical Diet, of R. I. some facts concerning it will be found. 
The Horton Harding grantees of 1761 were, Abraham, Israel, 
Lemuel, and Thomas, the relationship among whom has not been 
ascertained. Stephen Harding, a son of the first Stephen of Provi- 
dence, had a son Abraham, who is said to have m. Deborah , and 

to have d. about 1694. He had children, b. probably between 1680 
and 1694: Israel; Stephen; John; Mercy; Lydia; Deborah; Thomas. 
The Abraham Harding who was a grantee in Horton was probably 
the Abraham who m. in the North Parish of New London, Sept. 12, 
1734 (by Joshua Hempstead, a remarkable man, who was "at once 
farmer, surveyor, house and ship carpenter, attorney, stone cutter, 
sailor, and trader"), Mercy, dau. of John and Joanna (Williams) 
Vibber, b. Jan. 9, 1715. In Horton, April 1, 1762, Mercy Harding, 
b. July 30, 1742, was m. to Timothy Bishop, and she was probably 
their daughter. Whether Israel, Lemuel, and Thomas were their 
sons we do not know. That none of these grantees except Israel, if 
they came to Horton, remained, seems probable, for we have found 
no record whatever in Horton of any Harding of this family in the 
second generation, except the children of Israel Harding. 

In Horton, probably shortly after the migration from Conn.. 
Israeli Harding m. Sarah, dau. of Lebbeus, Sr., and Alice 
(Ransom) Harris, b. in New London, Dec. 18, 1739. Their children 
were : Rev. Harris Harding, b. in Horton, Oct. 10, 1761 ; Alice Hard- 
ing, m. to Joseph Allison, M. P. P., b. in Ireland about 1755 ; Mary 
Harding, m. to Benjamin Peck, Jr.; Sabra Harding, m. Feb. 10, 
1786, as his 1st wife, to Charles, son of Simeon DeWolf , b. in 1765 ; 
Sarah Harding, m. to Joseph Starratt; and it is said, ''Fally" Hard- 
ing, m. to some one perhaps in Digby county. For the family of 
Joseph and Alice (Harding) Allison see the Allison Family. On 



684 KING'S COUNTY 

the Horton Town Book is the record, without dates, of the marriage 
of Israel Harding and Rachel Fowler. 



SECOND HARDING FAMILY 
The Rev. Theodore Seth^ Harding, born in Barrington, Nova 
Scotia, March 11, 1773, was a son of Theodore Harding, Sr., and 
Martha (Sears) Harding, who came from Eastham, Mass., to Queen's 
county in 1761. A sketch of this eminent clergyman's life is given 
in an earlier part of this hook. He m. in King's County, probably 
in 1798, Zerviah, dau. of Simon and Bathsheba (Huntington) Fitch, 
b. in Cornwallis, May 21, 1776, and d. in Horton June 8, 1855. 
Children : 

i Ebenezer Fitch, M. D., b. Aug. 20, 1799, educated at 
Halifax, and at the University of New York, and 
practised medicine during most of his life afterward 
at Windsor, N. S. He m. Dec. 17, 1828, Sarah, dau. 
of Lieut.-Col. Samuel Vetch Bayard and his wife 
Sarah, of Wilmot; b. at Halifax, June 22, 1811, d. at 
Wilmot, Aug. 17, 1887. Dr. Harding d. at Windsor, 
April 28, 1861. He had children: Samuel Vetch 
Maria Sarah Bayard ; Aleda Bayard ; Robert Bayard 
Eliza Tremain; Charles Eben; Ellen Louisa Bayard 
Frederic Theodore William Bayard, M. D. ; Laura 
Mary. Of these children, Maria Sarah Bayard was 
m. in 1858 to Capt. Stephen Valentine Spain, R. N., 
who d. in July, 1872. Frederic Theodore William 
Bayard, M. D., m. Ellen E. Spillen, of Devon, Eng- 
land, and had 3 children, all of whom, with their 
parents, are dead. Mrs. Spain and her sister, Miss 
Harding, who represent this family in Nova Scotia, 
live at Middleton, Annapolis county. 

ii Jonathan, b. Sept. 2, 1801, m. and had a dau. m. to a 
Mr. Hunt, of Fredericton, N. B. He was drowned 
at St. John. 

iii Lydia Ann, m. Zedediah Clark Harris, of Maine, and d. 
leaving one son, Theodore Harris, a banker in Ken- 
tucky, who d. in Aug., 1909. 

iv Theodore Seth, Jr., b. July 18, 1807, m. (1) Ann Spurr of 
Round Hill, Annapolis county, (2) Maria Spurr. He 
had children by both marriages. One of his chil- 



FAMILY SKETCHES 685 

dren by his 1st wife was Mary, m. to James Van 

Buskirk, of Liverpool, N. S. 
V Sophia, b. April 14, 1810. 
vi Irene E., b. Nov. 30 1812, m. to James Armstrong, of Wolf- 

ville, and had a family, well known in the county, 
vii Margaret Bathsheba, b. Oct. 14, 1815, m. to Rev. John 

Man, and had a son John. 



THE HARRINGTON FAMILY 

The Harrington family of King's County, connected by marriage 
with so many other prominent families, was founded here by 
Stephen! Harrington, Jr., who received his grant in Corn- 
wallis in 1764. He was descended from Robert Harrington of 
Watertown, Mass., who appears in Watertown as early as 1642. 
Stephen Harrington, Jr., came to Cornwallis from North Kingston, 

R. I., and d. before March, 1771. His wife was Elizabeth ( ) and 

after her first husband's death (before May, 1773) she was m. to 
Christopher Knight, of R. I., Falmouth, N. S., and Cornwallis, 

i Stephen, 3d, m. Amy Harris. 

ii Elizabeth, m. to Col. William Charles Moore, son of Capt. 
Thomas William and Anne (Langdon) Moore, and 
was the mother of Richard, Daniel, and Stephen 
Harrington Moore, and Wilhelmina, wife of William 
Bennett Webster, M. D. 

iii Mary, m. to Amos Sheffield, the Cornwallis grantee. 
(There may have been others.) 

Stephen,2 3d, Harrington (Stephen, Jr.), m. March 28, 1771, 
Amy, dau. of Lebbeus and Alice (Ransom) Harris, b. Feb. 15, 1750. 
Children : 

i Elizabeth, b. Feb. 20, 1772. 

ii Daniel, b. May 18, 1774, d. July 21, 1827. He m. May 17, 
1795, Anne Eliza, dau. of Jehiel, Jr., and Elizabeth 
(Martin) DeWolf, b. May 16, 1778, and had chil- 
dren: Charlotte Leonora, b. Aug. 31, 1796; Eliza 
Caroline, b. June 26, 1798, m. in 1823 to Samuel 
Bartlett Wadsworth, of Easport, Me., b. in 1791, an 
uncle of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; 
Aaron DeWolf, b. April 16, 1800 ; Edward Henry, b. 
June 15, 1802 ; Charles Fortnam, b. July 11, 1804, m. 



686 KING'S COUNTY 

Mary Lee Tremaine; William Moore, b. and d. in 
1806; Mary Dana, b. Dec. 19, 1807, m. to George B. 
Hierlihy; William Moore, 2nd, b. April 24, 1810; 
Stephen Harris, b. May 23, 1812, m. Mary Emory 
Wbidden; Louisa Maria, b. June 10, 1814; Anna 
Phebe, b. Jan. 18, 1816; Daniel DeWolf, b. Jan. 18, 
1816 ; Sarah Jane, b. Aug. 12, 1819 ; Clement Hubert, 
b. April 9, 1823. See Personal Sketches for Edward 
Henry. 

iii Stephen, b. March 28, 1776. 

iv Sarah, b. Feb. 27, 1779. 

V Amy, b. Sept. 12, 1781. 

vi Gideon S., b. Feb. 1, 1784, m. June 28, 1812, Wilhelmina, 
dan. of Capt. Thomas William and Anne (Langdon) 
Moore, and was the father of Sarah (Harrington) 
1st wife of Hon. Thomas Lewis Dodge, M. L. C. 

vii Harris, b. Feb. 14, 1786. 

viii George, b. April 19, 1788, m. Jan. 20, 1820, Eleanor, dau. 
of Stephen Sheffield and had children: William; 
Eobert; Harriet Elizabeth, b. Dee. 26, 1824, m. May 
24, 1844, to Perez Martin Brechin, b. Nov. 21, 1821, 
(the parents of Wm. Pitt Brechin, M. D.) ; John. 



FIRST HARRIS FAMILY 

Among the Horton grantees May 29, 1761 were Asa, Daniel, 
Ephraim, Ephraim, Jr., Gilbert, Lebbeus, and Lebbeus, Jr., Harris, 
the relationship between most of whom can with certainty be 
known. James Harris, of Boston, Mass., b. about 1640, m. in Boston 
in 1666, Sarah Denison, and had 11 children, 7 of whom were 
bap. in the Old South Church in 1683. Two of his sons were Lieut. 
James, of Colchester, Conn., and Asa, of Preston and Saybrook. 
Of Lieut. James, a son Lebbeus, a grandson, Lebbeus, Jr., and a 
grandson James, son of Jonathan, came to Horton. Of Asa, two 
sons.; Asa, Jr., and Ephraim, were grantees. The parentage of Daniel 
and Gilbert it is not easy to determine. 

Lieut. James Harris of New London, b. in Boston, Mass., April 
4, 1673, m. in 1696, Sarah, dau. of Samuel Rogers of New London, 
who d. Nov. 13, 1748. He m. in 1750 Mrs. Sarah (Harris) Jackson, 
who d. Oct. 8, 1752. He d. Feb. 1757. By his first marriage he had 



FAMILY SKETCHES 687 

9 children, of whom the 4th, Jonathan, m. Rachel Otis, the 7th, Leb- 
beiis, m. Alice Ransom. 

Jonathan Harris, son of Lieut. James, b. Jan. 15, 1705, m. July 
28, 1735, Rachel, dan. of Hon. Joseph and Dorothy (Thomas) Otis, 
of New London, but originally from Scituate, Mass., in which State 
Mr. Otis had been Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Ply- 
mouth Co., from 1703 to 1710, and Representative in the General 
Court from 1710 to 1713. He d. Sept. 12, 1761, his wife also d. in 
Sept., 1761. They had 13 children, of whom the 4th, James, came 
to Horton. 

Lebbeusi Harris, M. P. P., son of Lieut. James and Sarah 
(Rogers), b. in Montville, Conn., Aug. 11, 1713, m. Nov. 20, 1738, 
Alice, dau. of Robert Ransom, of Salem parish, Colchester, Conn., 
and came to Horton, where he obtained a grant of 1^^ shares. He 
represented Horton in the Legislature from 1761 to 1765. Children : 

i Sarah, b. Dee. 18, 1739, m. to Israel Harding, and had 

a dau. Alice, m. to Joseph Allison; a son, Rev. 

Harris Harding; a dau. Mary, m. to Benjamin Peck; 

and a dau. Sarah, m. to Josepji Starratt. 
ii Lebbeus, Jr., b. Dee. 22, 1741, m. Lucilla DeWolf. 
iii Peleg Ransom, b. Jan. 9, 1744 
iv Elizabeth, b. Feb. 22, 1746. 

V Thaddeus, b. Feb. 29, 1748, m. Temperance Delap. 
vi Amy, b. Feb. 15, 1750, m. March 28, 1771, to Stephen 

Harrington, 
vii David, b. in 1756, m. Sarah Travis, of St. John, N. B., 

and d. March 31, 1848, aged 92. He is buried in 

Wolfville. 

Lebbeiis,2 Jr., Harris, (Lebbeus^) son of Lebbeus and Alice 
(Hansom) Harris, b. Dec. 22, 1741, m. in Horton, probably Nov, 
26, 1769, Lucilla, eldest dau. of Nathan and Lydia (Kirtland) 
DeWolf, b. ab. 1750. In 1763 he was Prothonotary 's clerk in Hor- 
ton. He d. May 20, 1827. Children : 

i Elisha, b. probably in 1770, m. probably, Mrs. Ruth 
(Sheffield) Belcher, widow of John Belcher, son of 
Benjamin. 



688 KING'S COUNTY 

ii Lydia Kirtland, b. Oct. 16, 1772, m. March 26, 1794, to 
Daniel, son of Jehiel DeWolf, and d. Nov. 17, 1843. 

iii James, m. Theodosia Van Buskirk. 

iv Alp.heus, m. Nov. 11, 1802, Rebecca, dau. of Stephen and 
Elizabeth (Woodworth) Eaton, b. April 21, 1781, 

and had children: Elisha, b. Oct. 5, 1803, m. 

Ells; Sarah Alice, b. Aug. 2, 1805, m. to Zebina 

Hall; Olivia, b. April 13, 1807, m. to Shaw; 

Nancy, b. Dec. 12, 1808, m. May 10, 1832, to Samuel 
Waite Pingree, b. in Boston, April 20, 1798 ; Stephen, 

b. Oct. 9, 1810, m. Chipman, (2) Lyons; 

Elizabeth, b. May 29, 1812, m. Feb. 25, 1836, to 
John Andrews Chipman; Nathan, b. Feb. 22, 1814; 
James Edward, b. Jan. 8, 1816; Lucilla, b. Feb. 4, 
1819; Thomas Andrew, b. Jan. 21, 1821, m. (1) in 
1847 Harriet Ntewell Chipman, (2) Mary Eliza, 
dau. of Thomas Woodworth Eaton; Daniel, b. Dec. 
15, 1822. 

V Rev. David, m. (1) Theresa Davidson, (2) his cousin 
Elizabeth, dau. of Thaddeus and Temperance 
(Delap) Harris, and d. in 1853. By his 1st marriage 
he had a son, Judson D, Harris, of Belcher street, 
Cornwallis, who m. Sophia Adelaide, dau. of Capt. 
David and Susanna (Strong) Eaton, b. Feb. 10, 
1823, and had 15 children, the eldest of whom was 
Charles Harris, M. D., who d. young. Rev. David 
had a dau. Sophia, m to Wm. Delap (James, Jr., 
James). 

vi Sarah, b. April 2, 1787, m. Jan. 11, 1810, to Amos, son 
of Stephen and Elizabeth (Woodworth) Eaton, b. 
July 28, 1785, and had 10 children. She d. Oct. 17, 
1865. 

vii Nathan. 

viii Alice, d. unm. 

Thaddeus^ Harris (Lebbeus^) son of Lebbeus and Alice (Ran- 
som) Harris, b. Feb. 29, 1748, m, in Cornwallis, Temperance, dau. 
of James and Mary (0 'Kelly) Delap, of Granville, Annapolis Co., 
b. in 1757, d. in 1832. He d. in 1836. Children : 

i Lebbeus, 3rd, b. Aug. 5, 1777. 

ii John Whidden, b. June 18, 1779, m. (1) Nov. 21, 1811, 
Margaret Elizabeth Smith, of Falmouth, N. S., (2) 

. Children by 1st marriage : Rev, Jonathan 

Masters, b. Feb. 16, 1813 ; Rachel Delay, b. May 7, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 689 

1814; Eliza Jane, b. Feb. 10, 1816, m. to Abram Van 

Biiskirk, of Aylesford, b. Jan. 4, 1811, d. in 1865; 

John Edwin, b. Jan. 19, 1820. Child by 2d marriage : 

Margaret, 
iii Hon James Delap, M. L. C, b. May 1, 1782, m. Wilhelmina 

Wemyss Campbell, 
iv Sarah, b, April 21, 1784. 

V Amy, b. Feb. 7, 1786, m. (1) to Kelly, (2) to John 

Smith of Falmouth, N. S. 

vi Mary, m. to Christy. 

vii Dorcas. 

viii Ephalia, d. unm. 

ix Lavinia, m. to Arthur Gibbon, of Wilmot, Annapolis Co. 

X Elizabeth, m. as his 2nd wife, to her cousin, Eev. David 

Harris. 

James^ Harris (Lebbeus^, Jr., Lebbeus^), son of Lebbeus, Jr., 
and Lucilla (DeWolf) Harris, b. about 1774, m. in Aylesford, Dec. 
26, 1792, Theodosia, dau. of Lawrence and Jannetje Van Buskirk, 
of Aylesford, and was a grantee of Aylesford, in 1814. Children : 

i Lucilla, b. Oct. 2, 1793. 

ii Lawrence, b. May 14, 1796, m. Feb. 3, 1820, Elizabeth Pat- 
terson, and had 6 children recorded in Aylesford. 
iii Lydia, b. April 5, 1799. 
iv Eliza Alice, b. Sept. 7, 1803 m. to Peter Carruthers. 

V Lebbeus, b. July 23, 1805. 

vi Elisha DeWolf, b. Nov. 29, 1808. 
vii James Edward, b. March 19, 1813. 
[A John Harris was also a grantee in Aylesford, in 1802]. 

Hon. James Delap^ Harris, M. L. C, (Thaddeus^, Lebbeus^), son 
of Thaddeus and Temperance (Delap) Harris, b. May 1, 1782, m. 
June 2, 1814, Wilhelmina Wemyss, dau. of Col. William and 
Rachel Lane (Moore) Campbell, of Cornwallis, b. Oct. 25, 1791, 
d. Dec. 31, 1865. He d. May 17, 1858. Mr. Harris, long one of 
the leading merchants in Kentville, and his wife, a woman of 
lovely character, were for many years considered among the most 
important people in the county, and indeed in the province. 
Their second dau., Rachel Anna, who was m. late in life to Joseph 
W. Hall, of St. John, N. B., was deeply beloved. In the memory 
of the author of this book, whose family were closely connected 



690 KIN<i'S COUNTY 

with hers, she lives as a gentle, cultivated, charitable woman, and 
a devoted, unselfish friend. Children : 

i Charlotte Ellen, b. June 1, 1815, m. April 17, 1834, to 
Chas. B. Owen, Barrister, of Yarmouth, N. S., and d. 
Nov. 4, 1877, having had in all, 6 children, of whom 
one, Laura Owen is living. 

ii Rachel Anna, b. Nov. 1, 1817, m. June 14, 1870, as his 
2nd or 3rd wife, to Joseph W. Hall, of St, John, 
N. B. She d. in St. John, June 9, 1886, and is 
buried at Oak Grove Cemetery, Kentville. 

iii Thaddeus, b. July 9, 1820, m. Dec. 23, 1840, Sophia 
Boehner, of Lunenburg, N. S., and had children: 
Richmond ; James ; Elizabeth ; all of whom are 
believed to have d. unm. Thaddeus d. June 14 
1851. 

iv Thomas William, Barrister, Q. C, b. April 21, 1822, m. 
(1) Feb. 20, 1852, Mary, dau. of Elijah Fowler, of 
Wolfville, (2) July 7, 1874, Mrs. Charlotte McColl, 
of Halifax. He d. April 3, 1876. By his 1st marriage 
he had 8 children: John Inglis; Thaddeus; Frances; 
Wilhelmina Wemyss; James; Mary Owen; William; 
and one other who d. young. Wilhelmina Wemyss 
and Mary Owen became Roman Catholic nuns. Mr. 
Harris was for many years one of the leading 
lawyers in the province. 

V James Tillott, b. Sept. 8, 1825, d. unm. 

vi John Inglis, b. May 31, 1827, d. unm. July 25, 1863. 

vii Elizabeth Lavinia, b. March 5, 1829, m. Oct. 11, 1858, 
Stuart Tremaine, of Halifax, and had 3 children: 
Eliza ; Lavinia ; Harris. 

viii Brenton Halliburton, b. March 3, 1831, m. Feb. 19, 1857, 
Margaret Maria, dau. of Otho and Maria (Starr) 
Hamilton, who d. Dec. 1, 1907. He d. j. p., Jan. 
5, 1868. 

ix Charles Edwin, b. March 5, 1833, d. unm. Sept. 28, 1855. 



SECOND HARRIS FAMILY 

James^ Harris, son of Jonathan^ (Lieut. James) and Rachel 
(Otis) Harris, of New London, Conn., and nephew of Lebbeus, of 
Horton, b. Dee. 13, 1740, m. in Colchester, Conn., in 1762, Anna 
Rathbun or Rathbone, dau. of Amos and Ann Rathbun, and in 



FAMILY SKETCHES 691 

1768 came to Ilorton. His home in Conn, just before he came to 
Horton was " the old Sterling place " in Salem Centre. He d. 
July 22, 1838 ; his wife d. Aug. 29, 1828, aged 84. Children : 

i Sabra, b. March 21, 1765, m. to Nathaniel Calkin, and d. 

July 5, 1825. 
ii Amasa, b. March 24, 1767, m. Eunice Denison, and d, 

Jan. 28, 1855. 
iii Samuel, b. July 4, 1769, m. Jane McLatchy, and d. April 

26, 1851. 
iv Nathaniel, b. Oct. 2, 1772, m. Mary Calkin, and d. May 

19, 1856. 

V Abel, b. Oct. 11, 1775, m. Christina Hill. 

vi James, b. Jan. 3, 1777, m. Mary McLatchy, and d. Feb. 

25, 1848. 
vii Nancy, b. March 16, 1779, m. to James, son of Jonathan 

and Phebe Hamilton. 

AbeP Harris (James^, Jonathan^, Lieut. James), son of James 
and Ann (Rathbun) Harris, was b. Oct. 11, 1775, and m. Feb. 23, 
1804, Christina Jane, dau. of Sheriff John Thomas Hill. He d. 
March 11, 1830. Children: 

i Charles William Henry, b. Nov. 14, 1804. 

ii James Thomas, b. Dec. 21, 1805. 

iii Charlotte Mary, b. Dec. 8, 1807. 

iv Robert Laird, b. Dec. 21, 1809. 

V Henry Palmer, b. May 11, 1812. 
vi Samuel Abel, b. Nov. 15, 1813. 

vii Arthur Wellesley, b. March 6, 1816. 
viii John Thomas, b. July 14, 1818. 



THIRD HARRIS FAMILY 

Daniel^ Harris, son most probably of Asa, Jr., (Asa, James of 
Boston) m. (1) Dec. 2, 1763, in Horton, Hannah Forsyth, probably 
a dau. of Gilbert Forsyth. She d. Nov. 27, 1785, and he m. (2) 
June 27, 1786, Martha Beckwith. Children by first marriage : 

1 James Prentice, b. Jan. 25, 1764. 

ii Gilbert, b. Aug. 16, 1765. 

iii Sarah, b. May 31, 1767. 

iv Anna, b. March 20, 1769. 

V Hannah, b. Aug. 17, 1771. 



692 KING'S COUNTY 

vi Mary, b. Sept. 26, 1773. 

vii Lucy Whitfield, b. Jan. 25, 1776. 

viii Asa, b. May 25, 1778. 

ix Daniel, Jr., b. April 12, 1780. 

X Rebecca, b. Aug., 1782. 

xi Eli, b. Nov. 16, 1785. 

Child by second marriage : 

xii John Bishop, b. Aug. 22, 1787. 

Ephraim^ Harris, (Asa, James of Boston), b. in Preston, Conn., 
Dec. 28, 1712, m. probably at Saybrook, we do not know whom. 
He lived successively at Saybrook, Salem, and after 1760, for a 
short time in Horton. He returned, however, to Colchester, Conn., 
in 1762, and there d. in Nov., 1781, aged 69. When he died he 
had 12 children living. 

An important representative in the county of the Harris family 
today, is Howard George Harris, B. A., Acadia, 1890, editor now 
for several years of the Advertiser, and Acadian Orchardist news- 
papers, published at Kentville. 



THE HIGGINS FAMILY 

Of the Higgins family of Rawdon, Hants County, three brothers, 
William John, born in Rawdon, Feb. 11, 1821; Thomas A., b. 
Feb. 17, 1824; and Daniel Francis, b. in 1830, came to Wolfville 
as young men, and here spent the rest of their lives. 

William John^ Higgins married, Feb. 1, 1847, Rachel, youngest 
dau. of Peter and Susanna (DeWolf) Strong of Horton, and had 
children: James Edward; Jessie (m. to Professor Albert Edward 
Coldwell) ; Amelia; Thomas Frank; William John; Melinda Rose; 
Charles Rupert. Wm. John Higgins, Sr., d. Jan. 10, 1902; his 
wife Rachel d. Nov. 2, il906. 

Rev Thomas A. Higgins, D. D., graduated at Acadia Univ. in 
1854, and was an instructor in Horton Academy from 1854 to 1856, 
His subsequent career was: Pastor of the Baptist church at 
Liverpool, N. S., 1857-1861; Principal of Horton Academy, 1861- 



FAMILY SKETCHES 693 

1874; Pastor of the Baptist church at Annapolis, 1874-1882; and 
at the Wolfville, Baptist church, 1884-1895. He m. Eliza, dau. 
of the Rev. John Moekett Cramp, D. D., and d. May 9, 1805. He 
had no children. He received from Acadia Univ. the degrees of 
M. A., in 1857, and D. D., in 1885. 

Professor Daniel Francis Higgins, grad. at Acadia Univ. 
B. A., 1859, M. A., 1861, Ph. D., 1882. He was tutor at Acadia, 
1859-1861; and Professor of Mathematics, 1861-1898. He was 
also at one time Mathematical Exminer for the Council of Public 

Instruction. He m. Amelia, dau. of William and DeWolf, 

and d. June 27, 1902. His children were: Rev. Walter Vaughan; 
Elizabeth; Daniel Francis; George E.; Rev. Moekett Cramp; and 
J. Edgar, who is an instructor in the Government School of Agri- 
culture in Honolulu. 



THE HILL FAMILY 

John Thomasi Hill, High Sheriff of King's County from 1792 
to 1800 was almost certainly of a North of Ireland family, and 
it is probable that his wife and the wife of Robert Laird were 
sisters. His mother, "Christina Jane Montgomery," d. in Horton, 
Jan. 24, 1798, but of his father we know nothing. John Thomas 
Hill m. March 5, 1778, Mary Palmer, and had children: John 
Thomas, Jr., b. June 11, 1779; Christina Jane, b. April 29, 1781, 
m. to Abel Harris; Henry Palmer, b. Jan. 1, 1783, d. March 7, 
1784; Henry Palmer, b. Dec. 17, 1784; William, b. July 2, 1787; 
W. Charles, b. Aug. 10, 1789; Mary, b. March 26, 1792; Robert 
Leard, b. Feb. 9, d. Feb. 19, 1795. See Personal Sketches. 



THE HILTON FAMILY 

In other parts of this volume will be found casual mentions of 
Benjamin Hilton, a lawyer, who for some time, we cannot tell how 
long, lived in Cornwallis. Mr. Hilton was evidently a person of 
consequence, but the only definite knowledge we have of him 



694 KING'S COUNTY 

and his family comes from the Cornwallis Town Book. There it is 
recorded that Benjamin Hilton, Esq., m. in Hempstead, Long 
Island, Nov. 11, 1779, Susannah, dau. of Joseph Griswold, of Long 
Island, N. Y., and that Benjamin and Susannah had children b. 
in Cornwallis: Edward, b. Sept. 5, 1785; Anne Bartow, b. May 
26, 1787; John, b. March 27, 1789. 



THE HUNTINGTON FAMILY 

The Huntington family, descended from Simon Huntington, who 
died on his way to America in 1633, is one of the most important 
families of Eastern Connecticut. To it belonged the eminent 
Samuel Huntington, b. in Windham in 1731, able jurist, signer 
of the Declaration of Independence, and Governor of Conn, from 
1786-1796. To it also belonged his nephew, Samuel Himtington, b. 
at Coventry, in 1765, Governor of Ohio from 1808 to 1810. At 
the period of the Kevolution, says Miss Caulkins in her history 
of Norwich, Conn., only six chaises, or gigs, were owned in Nor- 
wich. The owners of these were, General Jabez Huntington, 
whose gig was large, low, square-bodied, studded with brass nails 
that had square and flat heads, and with a top which could be 
thrown back; Col. Hezekiah Huntington; Dr. Daniel Lathrop, 
whose gig, a "splendid vehicle," had a yellow body, with a red 
morocco top, and a window on one side; Dr. Theophilus Rogers; 
and Nathaniel Backus, whose gig afterward passed to Capt. Seth 
Harding. 

The King's County family was founded by two brothers, Calebs 
Jr., and Ezekieli Huntington, sons of Caleb, Sr., and Lydia 
(Griswold) Huntington. Caleb, Sr., (Samuel, Simon) was b. in 
Norwich, Conn., Feb. 8, 1694, and Lydia Griswold, of the well 
known Griswold family, was born May 28, 1696. Caleb, Jr., Hunt- 
ington, who came to Cornwallis, was b. in Lebanon, Dec. 9, 1721, 
m. Feb. 7, 1747, Zerviah Case, and for some time before 
coming to Nova Scotia lived in Ashford, Conn. It is no doubt 
he, who, says Mr. Robie L. Reid, "lived to be a great age and in 



FAMILY SKETCHES 695 

his later years would sometimes bury his face in his hands and 
cry for hours to go back to Connecticut, where the grapes grew 
Avild in the woods." Children: 

i Zebulon, b. Dec. 9, 1747, in Lebanon, Conn., d. young, 
ii Ezra. b. March 24, 1749, in Lebanon, m. Nov. 9, 1778, 

Hannah, dau. of Ebenezer and Lydia Fitch, 
iii Bathsheba, b. Dec. 12, 1750, m. Dec. 21, 1773, to Simon, 

son of Ebenezer and Lydia Fitch, 
iv Lydia, b. Sept. 9, 1753, m. Oct. 31, 1771, to Mason, son 

of Hezekiah Cogswell. 
V Caleb, 3rd, b. probably in 1758, d. at Cape Breton in 

1845. 

Ezekieli Huntington, brother of Caleb, was b. Aug. 2, 1732, and m. 

(1) Esther , who d. Aug. 28, 1761, (2) Rachel . Children 

by first marriage. 

i Joseph, b. May 20, 1758, in Lebanon, 
ii Elizabeth, (Betty) b. Sept. 3, 1760, in Cornwallis. 
Children by second marriage: 

iii Esther, b. July 5, 1763. 

iv Ezekiel, Jr., b. Nov. 13, 1764. 

Facts concerning later generations may be gleaned from the 
Cornwallis Town Book. 



THE HUSTON FAMILY 

Among the grantees of land in Cumberland county, N. S,, near 
the Missiquash river, in 1763, were Capt. John, Alexander, and 
William Huston, whose ancestry we have not learned. They were 
probably, but not certainly, all from Maine, Capt. John at least 
having served in the Louisburg expedition. A John Huston, per- 
haps the same, lived many years, until his death, in Cornwallis, 
his house being on the site of what afterward was the site of the 
Presbyterian manse, which house still later became the Corn- 
wallis Baptist parsonage. He is buried in the churchyard at 
Chipman's Corner, the inscription on his tombstone being: "Here 
lies John Huston, Esq., who died in 1795, aged 85 years." "John 
Huston, Esq." was elected to the second Assembly of Nova Scotia, 



696 KING'S COUNTY 

in 1759, and this was no doubt the same man. John Huston of 
Cumberland is said to have married a Dickson (for another mar- 
riage between a Huston and a Dickson, see the Harvey Genealogy, 
p. 140). One tradition says that he had no children, but we know 
that the daughter Mary of John Huston of Cornwallis (she may 
have been an adopted daughter) became in 1776, the 1st wife of 
Rev. Thomas Handley Chipman, who was b. in Newport, R. I., 
Jan. 17, 1756. Her children were : Jane Chipman, m. to John 
Morse, of Annapolis; Margaret Chipman, m. to George Troop, 
great uncle of William Henry Troop (who m. Georgianna, dau. 
of Archdeacon Coster, of Fredericton, and had 3 children, the 
eldest of whom is Rev. George Osborne Troop, D. D., of Montreal), 
John George Troop, of Halifax, who m. Margaret Elizabeth 
Morrow, and Jared Ingersoll Troop, M. P. P., of Bridgetown; 
John Huston Chipman; Ann Chipman, m. to Daniel Lovett, of 
Annapolis. 

Capt. John Huston of Cumberland was the protector and foster 
father of Sir Brook Watson, whom he found a one-legged orphan 
boy in Boston and took with him to Cumberland. Brook Watson, as 
is well known, became a notable merchant in London, long acted 
there as agent for Nova Scotia, was knighted, became Lord Mayor 
of London, and afterward received a baronetcy. When he died 
it is said he left legacies to Mary (Huston) Chipman 's family. The 
widow of Capt. John Huston of Cumberland, and we suppose of 
Cornwallis, is said to have survived her husband some years, after 
his death living with her nephew, Thomas Ingersoll Brown, at Fort 
Belcher, and Truro. In the Louisburg expedition Capt. John 
Huston served as Capt. of the 8th Company, in Col. Samuel 
Willard's 4th Mass. Regt. At what time he came to Cornwallis 
(if it was he who came) we do not know. 



THE INGLIS FAMILY 
The Rt. Rev. Charles^ Inglis, D. D., the first Bishop of Nova Scotia 
was for many years a resident of Aylesford, where at first, like his 



FAMILY SKETCHES 697 

friend, Mr. JMordeii, he had only a summer home. Later, however, 
for many years he made Aylesford his permanent residence. Bishop 
Charles Inglis, the first bishop consecrated for a Colonial See, was 
born in Ireland in 1734, his father, the Kev. Archibald Inglis, of 
Glen and Kilearr, having been ordained for the curacy of Letter- 
macward. County Donegal, in 1713, in 1722 having been given the 
living of Glencolumkille, in the Diocese of Kaphoe, and in 1743, in 
addition, that of Kilearr. This clergyman, who died in 1745, was a 
son of Kev. James Inglis, M. A., who d. in 1739, and he was a son, 
probably, of another Kev. Archibald Inglis, a Scottish Episcopal 
clergyman of some distinction, at one time Rector of Glasgow Uni- 
versity, but later a resident of Donegal, in Ireland. The Rev. Archi- 
bald Inglis, Rector of Glen and Kilearr, had three sons, the eldest 
of w^hom was the Rev. Richard Inglis, who entered Trinity College, 
Dublin, in 1737, at the age of seventeen, and the youngest, Charles 
Inglis, the first Colonial Bishop of the British Empire, who was born 
in 1734, and bout 1756 came to America to teach in the Free 
School at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In 1758, at the hands of the 
Right Rev. Thomas Hayter, Bishop of London, he was ordained 
deacon and priest, and from 1759 to 1765 was in charge of the mis- 
sion of Dover, Delaware, his field comprising the whole county of 
Kent. From England, after "a long and dangerous voyage," he 
came directly to his mission, and on the first of July, 1759, began 
his work there. On a salary of fifty pounds a year he labored in 
Delaware for five years, but on the 28th of August, 1764, the vestry 
of Trinity Church, New York City, resolved to call him as assistant 
to the Rev. Samuel Auchmuty, who was also at this date elected to 
the rectorship of the church. "Besides what might be raised for 
him by subscription," and with a sufficient sum being given him for 
the expense of his removal from Delaware, Mr. Inglis was promised 
by the church a salary of two hundred pounds per annum, currency. 
In February, 1764, he married at Dover, Mary, daughter of Captain 
Benjamin and Mary Vining, born in 1733, but on the 13th of Octo- 
ber of the same year the young wife died in childbirth. 

Dee. 3, 1764, Mr. Inglis was temporarily in Philadelphia, and 



698 KING'S COUNTY 

from there he wrote the Eev. Mr. Auchmuty, refusing the New- 
York appointment. His Delaware mission, he thought, needed him, 
and there he decided to stay. A few months later, however, he ac- 
cepted the appointment, and on the sixth of December, 1765, he 
formally entered on his duties in New York. On the occasion of his 
departure from Delaware, the church wardens and vestry of Dover 
"wrote to express their great regret at his going, and to testify that 
he had with unwearied diligence attended four churches, discharg- 
ing every duty of his functions, and conducting himself on all oc- 
casions in a manner truly laudable and exemplary. ' ' On the fourth 
of March, 1777, Dr. Auchmuty died, and on the twentieth Mr. 
Inglis was chosen rector of the historic New York church. The 
church structure, the rectory and school houses had been burned 
in the incendiary fire of 1776, which destroyed almost a thousand 
houses, or about a fourth of the town, and Mr. Inglis' induction 
took place m the churchyard, under the supervision of Governor 
Tryon, "the new rector laying his hand upon the charred ruins of 
the church in taking the oath of allegiance and conformity." His 
formal resignation of the rectorship was made November 1, 1783; 
the 25th of that month the British forces evacuated the city. As 
rector of Trinity, says Dr. Dix, "he bore himself with great dignity, 
and faithfully discharged the duties of his sacred office." The two 
chapels of Trinity, St. Paul's and St. George's, were left, and until 
the Revolution made the rector's further continuance in the city 
impossible, he regularly ministered in one or the other of these 
churches. Some time before his death, Dr. Auchmuty, who was in 
feeble health, went to New Jersey, leaving Mr, Inglis in charge. 
When at last Governor Tryon found himself unable to maintain 
order. Dr. Inglis also withdrew to Flushing, taking the keys of the 
locked chapels with him. What Mr. Inglis' early scholastic educa- 
tion had been we do not know, but on the 6th of April, 1770, the 
University of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree of 
Master of Arts, and on the 25th of February, 1778, the higher de- 
gree of Doctor of Divinity. 

Dr. Inglis' precise movements in the decade preceding his con- 



FAMILY SKETCHES 699 

secration as Bishop of Nova Scotia are a little uncertain. In Octo- 
ber, 1775, he sent his family, together with his books and papers, 
to New Windsor, Orange county, but in a short time his wife and 
family removod to Goshen; later he himself was for a considerable 
time at Flushing. On the 20th of January, 1782, his eldest child, 
Charles, died; the 21st of September, 1783, his second wife, Mar- 
garet (Crooke), also died. Late in the next month, or early in 
November, probably with two of his children, he embarked for Eng- 
land, and there he probably remained until August 12, 1787, when 
he was consecrated at Lambeth, the first Bishop of Nova Scotia, 
with jurisdiction over the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, 
New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Bermuda, and Newfound- 
land. Sailing from England the sixteenth day after his consecra- 
tion, he reached Halifax on Tuesday, October 15th, and there was 
received with the highest expressions of esteem and good will. In 
May, 1809, he was made a member of His Majesty's Council, his 
rank in the Province to be next after the Chief Justice. The life of 
Bishop Inglis has never fully been written; valuable sketches of 
him, however, are to be found in the Dictionary of National 
Biography; Canon Mockridge's "Bishops of the English Church in 
Canada and Newfoundland;" Bishop Perry's "Historical Col- 
lections of the American Colonial Church," "Centennial Sermon in 
"Westminster Abbey," and "History of the American Episcopal 
Church;" Dr. Berrian's and Dr. Dix's "Histories of Trinity Church, 
New York;" Dr. Eaton's "The Church of England in Nova Scotia 
and the Tory Clergy of the Revolution;" and a pamphlet entitled, 
"Charles Inglis, our First Colonial Bishop," by the Rev. H. Vere 
White, M. A., Dublin, 1899. His own vigorous letter to the Rev. 
Dr. Hind of the S. P. G., written from New York, October 31, 1776, 
to be found printed in full in the third volume of the Documentary 
History of New York (1850), sets forth in detail the difficulties with 
which in his brief rectorship, he had to cope, and the hardships to 
which he was exposed during the stormy time of the Revolution. 
In the Act of Attainder of 1779, he and his wife were included; in 
the pillage of the city by the Revolutionists their house in New 



700 KING'S COUNTY 

York was plundered of everything, their loss, he says, amounting 
to near two hundred pounds, American currency, or upwards of a 
hundred pounds sterling. Bishop Inglis' labors in his great colonial 
diocese continued from the date of his consecration to his death 
in 1816, a period of between twenty-eight and twenty-nine years. 
He was not a man of great mental brilliancy or remarkable scholar- 
ship, but he was a faithful missionary bishop, an able administrator 
of the affairs of his large, steadily-growing diocese, and a staunch 
believer in the right to supremacy in the Christian world of the 
Anglican Church. That his imprint is still deep on the Church of 
England in the Maritime Provinces none can doubt. 

Bishop Inglis married, secondly, in New York, on Monday evening, 
May 31, 1773, Margaret, daughter of John and Margaret (Ellison) 
Crooke, of Ulster county, New York, her father's father being John 
Crooke, Sr., of Kingston, New York, for years Surrogate of Ulster 
county, and her mother's parents, Thomas and Margaret (Garra- 
brant) Ellison. [Margaret Ellison was the second of eleven chil- 
dren of Thomas and Margaret (Grarrabrant) Ellison; of her 
brothers, Thomas married Mary Peck, of the Pecks from whom 
Peck Silp, N. Y., is named; William married Mary Floyd, first 
cousin of William Floyd, of Long Island, one of the signers of the 
Declaration of Independence. Of her sisters, Elizabeth was mar- 
ried to Cadwallader Colden. A John Crooke was one of the first 
wardens of Trinity Church.] In 1776 Dr. Inglis' family is said to 
have included his mother-in-law, Mrs. Crooke, but it seems hardly 
likely that this lady went with her son-in-law and his children to 
Nova Scotia. Her will, which bears date April 18, 1808, was proved 
November 14, 1811, and in it she makes the following bequests : To 
her grandson, John Inglis, then the third Bishop of Nova Scotia, 
the sum of three hundred and seventy-five dollars; to her grand- 
daughter, Mrs. Margaret Halliburton, of Halifax, two hundred and 
fifty dollars; to her grand-daughters, Mrs. Margaret Halliburton, 
and Mrs. Anne Pidgeon of New Brunswick, all her wearing ap- 
parel, and bed and table linen ; to her three grand-children the resi- 
due of her estate. Her executors were Cornelius Eay, Clement 



FAMILY SKETCHES 701 

Moore, and Henry Barclay. When Bishop Inglis came to Nova 
Scotia, ho naturally first made his home in Halifax, but the Crown 
gave him a grant of land at Aylesford, in the western part of 
King's County, and about 1794 he built a house and began to reside 
there. His estate he named "Clermont," in recollection of the 
well-known Livingston Manor on the Hudson River. He died at 
Clermont, February 24, 1816, in the 82d year of his age, the 58th 
of his ministry, and the 29th of his episcopate. He was buried 
under the chancel of St. Paul's Church, Halifax, his funeral being 
attended bj^ the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir John Coape Sherbrooke, 
Sir John Wentworth, Bart., the members of H. M. Council, and 
all the most prominent citizens of Halifax. The chief published 
writings of Bishop Inglis were : 

I — "A Vindication of the Religious Condition of the American 
Colonies, prepared and published by Rev. C. Inglis, 1750." (This 
was in answer to a sermon by the Bishop of Llandaff, giving an un- 
favorable account of the state of the religion in the colonies). 

n — "Plain Truth: Addressed to the Inhabitants of America; con- 
taining remarks on a late pamphlet (by Thomas Paine), entitled 
'Common Sense.' Written by Candidus. Pseud. Philadelphia, 
1776." 

HI — An Essay on Infant Baptism. 

IV — A Letter on the Question of Free Pews in Kingston Church 
(New York). 

V — A Defence of his own Character against Certain False and 
Malicious Charges contained in a Pamphlet entitled, "A Reply to 
Remarks on a Vindication of Governor Parr and his Council," etc., 
London. Printed in 1784. 

To these should be added the notable letter to the Rev. Dr. Hind, 
S. P. G., to which reference has been made above. In it Dr. Inglis 
speaks of his refusal to accede to General Washington's request that 
he should omit prayers for the King. Important letters from him 
will also be found in Bishop Perry's History of the American Epis- 
copal Church, Vol 2; and Dr. Dix's History of Trinity Church, Vol. 
2. His farewell sermon in New York, preached in both the chapels 
of Trinity, October 26, 1783, was from 2 Cor. 13, 2. 

Children of Bishop Charles^ and Margaret (Crooke) Inglis: 
i Charles, b. in 1774, d. Jan. 20, 1782. Both he and his 



702 KING'S COUNTY 

mother are buried under the chancel of St. Paul's 

Chapel, New York City, 
ii Margaret, b. in 1775. 
iii Anne, b. in 1776. 
iv John, b. Dec. 9, 1777. 

In the churchyard of Christ Church, Dover, Delaware, is a tomb- 
stone with the following inscription to the memory of the first Mrs. 
Charles Inglis : 

Sacred to the memory of | MRS. MARY INGLIS | whose 
mortal part lies here deposited | Till the resurrection of the Just, ] 
Adorned with every virtue | And Amiable accomplishment ] She 
was I For dignity of manners, mildness of temper, | Sincerity of 
Heart, warm piety to God, | Benevolence to mankind, Filial tender- 
ness I and Conjugal affection | A shining ornament and pattern to 
her Sex | Beloved, esteemed by all who knew her. | She died in 
child-birth of Twins, | October 13th, An. Dom. 1764, Aetat Fuoe 31. 

Two mural tablets, connected, in the chancel of St. Paul's Church, 

Halifax, Nova Scotia, bear the following: 

Sacred to The Memory of | THE RIGHT REV. AND HONBLE. 
CHARLES I INGLIS, D. D. | (Third Son of The Rev. Archibald 
Inglis, of Glen and Kilcar, in Ireland) | Bishop of Nova Scotia and 
Its Dependencies; | "Whose Sound Learning and Fervent Piety 



And Supported by 
Eminently Qualified 
First Bishop | Ap- 



Directed by Zeal According To Knowledge 
Fortitude, Unshaken | Amidst Peculiar Trials 
Him For The Arduous | Labours Of The 

pointed To A British Colony. | This Stone Is Raised By Filial Duty 
and Affection | In Grateful Remembrance of Every | Private Vir- 
tue I That Could Endear a Father and a Friend | Of The Ability, 
Fidelity and Success, with | "Which | He was Enabled By The 
Divine Blessing, To | Discharge All His | Public Duties | The 
General Prosperity Of The Church In His | Diocese | The Increase 
of His Clergy, And of The | Provision For Their Support, | The 
Establishment of a Chartered College | And The Erection of More 
Than Twenty new | Churches | are The Best | Monument. | Obiit 
annu salutis MDCCCXVI, aetatis Ixxxi. 

THE RIGHT REVEREND JOHN INGLIS, D, D. | By Whom 
the Above Monument was Erected | Has Followed His Pious 
Parent to the | Grave, | The Inheritor of His Virtues, and of His 
Zeal, I In the Cause of His Divine Master, | After a Faithful Service 
of Many Years ] As Rector of this Parish | He was Consecrated 
in the Year of Our | Lord, 1825, | Bishop of the Diocese, | Endued 
with Talents of a High Order | He Zealously Devoted His "Whole 
Life I To the Diligent Discharge of His Sacred | Duties | As a 



FAMILY SKETCHES 703 

Minister of the Gospel of Christ ; | He died on the 27th of October, 
A. D. 1850, I In the Seventy Third Year of His Age | And in the 
Twenty Sixth of His Episcopate. 

In Erecting this Monument | To Their Lamented Pastor and 
Bishop I The Members of the Church Have the | Melancholy Satis- 
faction of Uniting It I With That | On Which He Himself Has So 
Feelingly | Kecorded | The Virtues of His Father. 

Mural tablet in the chancel of St. Paul's Chapel, Broadv^ray, New 
York, to the second Mrs. Charles Inglis, and her son, Charles: 

AVithin this Chancel, in certain Hope of a | Eesurrection to 
Glory I through Jesus Christ, are deposited the Remains of | MAR- 
GARET I the Wife of CHARLES INGLIS, D. D. | formerly Rector 
of Trinity Church in this City. | She died the 21st of September, 
1783, aged 35 years. | Near her is interred aU that was mortal of 
CHARLES, I Eldest Son of the said MARGARET and CHARLES 
INGLIS, I who, alas! at an early Period, was snatched away ] 
January the 20th, 1782, in the 8th Year of his Age. | The Husband 
and the Father, since become Bishop of Nova Scotia, | As a Testi- 
mony of the tenderest Affection to a dear | and worthy wife, | and 
Esteem for a devout Christian ; and of the fondest Regard for an | 
amiable Son, who, although in Age a Child, was | yet in Under- 
standing I a Man, in Piety a Saint, and in Disposition | an Angel, 
caused this | Monument to be erected in the Year of our Lord | 
1788. 

Margaret^ Inglis (Bishop, Charles^), born in New York in 1775, 
was married, September 19, 1799, to the Hon. Brenton Halliburton, 
M. L. C, who became the eighth Chief Justice of Nova Scotia, and 
after his wife's death was knighted. Sir Brenton was the son of 
Dr. John and Susannah (Brenton) Halliburton, and was born in 
Newport, R. I., December 3, 1775. In 1782 his father came as a 
Loyalist to Halifax, and henceforth the family's interests all lay in 
Nova Scotia. In his boyhood, for a few years Brenton studied in 
England, but on the death of his elder brother, John, in 1791, he 
returned to Halifax and studied law. When the Duke of Kent 
came to Halifax as Commander of the Forces, he entered the regi- 
ment of which H. R. H. was colonel — ^the Seventh Foot Fusiliers — 
receiving his lieutenancy June 28, 1795. His captaincy he received 
September 6, 1798, but when the Prince finally left Halifax (July 
30, 1800) he withdrew from the army, and took up the practice of 
law. His short military career, indeed, began in 1793, when he en- 



704 KING'S COUNTY 

tered the Nova Scotia Provincials (militia regiment) as an ensign. 
At the age of 33 Mr. Halliburton was elevated to the Bench, and on 
the resignation of Hon, Sampson Salter Blowers, seventh Chief Jus- 
tice, then 90 years old, he was made head of the Judiciary. At the 
age of 85 he was made a Knight. Among British Colonial public 
men of the last half of the eighteenth century and first 
half of the nineteenth century, Sir Brenton's name deservedly 
stands high. He was a clear-sighted lawyer, an able and upright 
Chief Justice and Judge, and a truly religious man. He was 
socially reserved, and yet kindly and courteous. In his "Life" of 
Sir Brenton, published many years ago in Halifax, the Rev. Dr. 
George William Hill, D. C. L., his biographer, speaks very tenderly 
of the sincere and humble piety that distinguished him in his last 
days. Sir Brenton lived for years on Morris street, Halifax, but in 
later life he spent much time at the place he owned called ' ' The 
Bower," on the Northwest Arm. He also owned an estate near 
that of his father-in-law, Bishop Inglis, at Wilmot, Annapolis 
county, to which he gave the name " Margaretsville. " A portrait 
of him by A. G. Hoit, painted in 1840 or 1845, hangs in the Legisla- 
tive Council Chamber in Halifax. He died July 16, 1860, in his 
86th year, and the following tablet to his memory rests on the walls 
of St. Paul's Church: 

To the Memory of | THE HONOURABLE SIR BRENTON HAL- 
LIBURTON I Who for more than Half a Century adorned | the 
Bench of | The Supreme Court and for Twenty-seven | Years was | 
Chief Justice of Nova Scotia; | Kind, Amiable Loving and Be- 
loved I In every Relation of Life, | He United to a Cheerful Dis- 
position I And many Private and Social Virtues, | The Graces of a 
Truly Christian Character, | Long Time a Member and After- 
wards I President of the Legislative Council, | He Took a Warm 
Interest in the Welfare of | the Province | And the Improvement 
of Its Laws and | Institutions, | On The Bench | He Was Dignified, 
Affable and Courteous; | A Patient and Laborious Judge | Of 
Great Legal and General KJnowledge, | A Vigorous Intellect, Clear 
Judgment | And a Singular Aptitude for the Investigation of 
Truth. I These, with His Acknowledged Uprightness | and Im- 
partiality, I Obtained For Him Universal Esteem, | Born Dec. 
3rd, 1775, He Entered Into Rest, | July 16, 1860. | "I know whom 



FAMILY SKETCHES 705 

I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which 
I have t'ommitted unto hini against that day." 

Margaret-' (Inglis) Halliburton died in Halifax, July 5, 1841, 
aged 66. A tablet in St. Paul's Church to her memory has this in- 
scription : 

Sacred To The Memory of | MARGARET | The Wife of THE | 
HONOURABLE BRENTON HALLIBURTON | Who departed This 
Life I On the 5th of July, 1841, | Aged 66 years. ] Early trained in 
the Nurture | And Admonition of the Lord j By Her Pious Father | 
The First Protestant Bishop | In The British Colonies, | She Was 
Conspicuous | Throughout Her Life | For Piety to God | And 
Charity to the Poor, | This Tablet Is Raised | As a Humble 
Memorial j Of Her Virtues | By Her Affectionate Husband. | 
Blessed are "the Dead which die in the Lord | Even so saith the 
Spirit :| For they rest from their Labours. 

Children of Sir Brenton and Margaret (Inglis) Halliburton: 

i Margaret, b. June 3, 1800. 

ii Susannah, b. Nov. 6, 1803 ; bap. Jan. 8, 1804 ; d. Dec. 11, 

1874, unm. 
iii Mary E., b. probably in 1805, d. May 31, 1828, unm. | 

iv John Crooke, b. 1807, d. Nov. 8, 1884, unm. 
V Charles Inglis, b. perhaps in 1809, lived in Amherst, N. S., 

where he was for a time Judge of Probate. He d. 

probably in Amherst, unm., before Oct., 1848. 
vi Ellen Emeline, b. April 19, 1811, d. Nov. 29, 1875, unm. 
vii Charles H., b. in 1812, buried Sept. 24, 1819, aged 7 years, 
viii Brenton, b. probably in 1813, d. probably before he was 

30, perhaps in Aylesford. 
ix Elizabeth, b. Oct. 20, 1815, bap. Jan. 21, 1816. 

Of these children, Margaret^ was m. in 1825 to Hon. Enos Collins, 
M. L. C, and had seven children. John Crooke was a barrister, and 
for forty-four years Chief Clerk of the Legislative Council. He was 
admitted to King's College, Windsor, in 1823, but did not graduate. 
He was the last of Bishop Charles Inglis' descendants to live in 
Halifax, and the last person descended from Dr. John Halliburton 
to bear the Halliburton name. Like others of the family, he is 
buried in Camp Hill Cemetery, Halifax. Elizabeth was m. in 1862 
to Major Richard Matthews Poulden, R. A. She was Major 
Poulden's second wife, and she had no children. Major Poulden 
was made Ensign July 29, 1825 ; Lieutenant, Jan. 3, 1828 ; Captain, 



706 KING'S COUNTY 

October 22, 1840; Major, November 28, 1854. He retired on cap- 
tain's full pay, and was living in 1875, Mrs. Poulden undoubtedly 
died in England. 

Aime2 Inglis (Bishop Charles^), born in New York in 1776, was 
m. about 1793, to the Eev. George Pidgeon, successively missionary 
at Belleisle Bay, Oak Point and adjacent parts on the Kiver St. John 
(New Brunswick), and Rector of Fredericton, and of Trinity 
Church, St. John. Mr. Pidgeon was the son of Edward Pidgeon, 
gentleman, of County Kilkenny, Ireland, and was born in 1760. 
October 7, 1776, he entered Trinity College, Dublin, and November 
2, 1781, received an ensigncy in the 65th Regiment. During the 
Revolutionary "War he came with his regiment to America, and at 
the close of the war removed to Halifax, left the army, and became 
a candidate for holy orders. Tradition has it that he fell in love 
with Anne Inglis, and that the Bishop refused to give his consent 
to his marrying her unless he returned to civil life. He was prob- 
ably ordained and married about 1793, the year that he began his 
work under the auspices of the S. P. G. in the mission of Belleisle. 
August 19, 1795, he was elected rector of Fredericton, as successor 
to the Rev. Dr. Cooke, and later he was appointed by his father-in- 
law Ecclesiastical Commissary. His rectorship of Fredericton lasted 
till 1814, when he was appointed rector of Trinity Church, St. John. 
This position he held for four years, but during the last few weeks 
of his life he was in such poor health that the church was closed. 
His duties of Ecclesiastical Commissary he discharged for twenty- 
three years. He died rather suddenly, May 6, 1818, only a little 
more than two years after Bishop Inglis, and he was buried in the 
old burying ground in St. John, where his tombstone may be seen. 
The inscription it bears is as follows : 

Under this Stone | are placed | The early remains of the | 
REV. GEORGE PIDGEON, j Formerly of Trinity College Dublin, j 
Late Rector in this Parish | And Ecclesiastical Commissary in this 
Province 23 years, j He died. May 6, 1818, | Aged 57 years. 

Referring to his death, the contemporary St. John newspaper 
said: "His pious and benevolent character and amiable manners 



FAMILY SKETCHES 707 

■will long endear his memory to his numerous friends." Notices of 
Mr. Pidgeon vnll be found in Lee's "First Fifty Years of the 
Church in New Brunswick," and Canon Brigstocke's "History of 
Trinity Cliurch, St. John." A miniature likeness of him hangs in 
the vestry of Christ Church Cathedral, Frederieton. Mrs. Pidgeon 
died childless, at the house of Sir Brenton Halliburton, in Halifax, 
July 4, 1827, in her 51st year. She was buried in St. Paul's church- 
yard in Halifax, and a well-cut tombstone marks her grave. 

Bishop John2 Inglis (Bishop Charles^), born December 9, 1777, in 
New York, was one of the first students to be enrolled in the 
Academy at Windsor that later became King's College. He was 
one of a group of pre-charter students of the young college who 
afterward became well known in the British Colonial world, but of 
his graduation, or of his attainment from King's College of his de- 
gree of Doctor of Divinity, we have not the dates. His father in- 
tended to send him to Oxford to be educated, but seems not to have 
done so, though the young man was in England in 1800, when he 
was in his twenty-third year. His ordination took place at Ayles- 
ford in 1801, and during 1801 and 1802 he lived at Clermont and 
served the Aylesford parish. August 31, 1802, he married at Wind- 
sor, Nova Scotia, where it seems as if the Cochran family must then 
temporarily have been residing, Elizabeth, eldest daughter of the 
Hon. Thomas and his second wife Jane (Allan) Cochran, born April 
15, 1781. (See the author's monograph, "The Cochran and Inglis 
Families, of Halifax.") In July, 1804, their first child, Charles, 
was born in Halifax ; in 1806, their second, Jane Louisa, was born in 
London, England; their remaining six children were all born in 
Halifax. How the Aylesford parish was served for fourteen years 
we are not informed, but Mr. Inglis acted for many years as his 
father's Commissary, and it is evident that he was not at all con- 
tinuously there. His immediate predecessor at Aylesford was the 
Rev. John Wiswall, and his next successor was the Rev. Edwin Gil- 
pin, who married Gertrude Aleph Brinley, born May 26, 1794. 
(King's Chapel Epitaphs). The Rev. Edwin Gilpin, and probably 
his wife, sleep in the churchyard at Annapolis Royal. In 1806 Mr. 



708 KING'S COUNTY 

Inglis was in England, and again in 1813. In 1815 and thereafter 
he is styled ' ' Dr. ' ' Inglis. In February, 1816, his father died, and the 
Rev, John, who had been for years his "mainstay and ready co- 
worker," naturally expected to be appointed in his place. He 
therefore went to England apparently to present his claim to the 
bishopric, but the same ship that took him took also an influential 
petition from the Nova Scotia Legislature for the appointment of 
Dr. Robert Stanser, an Englishmen, then rector of St. Paul's, Hali- 
fax. The bishopric was given to Dr. Stanser, the rectorship of St, 
Paul's was given to Dr. Inglis, and with lovely Christian spirit the 
latter returned to Halifax and took up his parish work, continuing, 
however, to act as Commissary, as he had done in his father's life- 
time. The episcopate of Bishop Stanser was not successful, chiefly 
from the fact that for much of the time the Bishop found it neces- 
sary, on acount of ill-health, to live in England. He continued, how- 
ever, to be bishop till 1825, when he at last resigned, and left the 
field open for a successor. Tardy recognition now came to Dr. 
Inglis, who, on the 25th of March, 1825, was consecrated at Lam- 
beth. When Bishop Stanser resigned, Dr. Inglis was in England 
soliciting subscriptions to King's College, and there was no delay 
in his appointment to the vacant see. Bishop John Inglis is remem- 
bered not only as a gentleman of the highest breeding (the Chester- 
field of the English episcopate, he was called in his time), but as 
a man of sympathetic and kindly spirit. To his credit, be it said, 
he seems never to have alienated "dissenters" by superciliously 
asserting his church's claims. His life has been told at some length 
by Canon Mockridge, in his "Bishops of the Church of England in 
Newfoundland and Canada," and by this author in his "Church of 
England in Nova Scotia." When Bishop Charles Inglis died he en- 
tailed part, at least, of his Aylesford estate to his son, Bishop John, 
and after him to his grandson, Charles, Bishop John's eldest son. 
At the death of Bishop John all of the estate the other children of 
Bishop John could sell was disposed of, and the widow and her 
daughters and younger sons made their home permanently in Lon- 
don. The eldest son, Charles, M. D., however, continued to live in 



FAMILY SKETCHES 709 

Aylesford, where he died unmarried in 1861. He was buried in the 
churchyard in Aylesford, in a sp.ot that is now covered by the en- 
larged chancel of the church. Bishop John^ Inglis died in England, 
October 27, 1850, and was buried in St. Mary's churchyard, Batter- 
sea, London. Mrs. Inglis died July 14, 1862, and was buried in St. 
Paul's churchyard, Rusthall, Tunbridge Wells, Kent. A window 
in St. Paul's, Rusthall, bearing an inscription, perpetuates her 
memory. 

Inscription on a mural tablet in St. Mary's Church, Battersea, 
London, S. W., to the Right Rev. John Inglis, D. D. : 

In the Adjoining Churchyard Rest the Mortal Remains | of the 
RIGHT REVEREND JOHN INGLIS, D. D. | Lord Bishop of Nova 
Scotia, I who departed this Life on the 27th of October, A. D. 
1850, I In the 73rd Year of His Age. | From Early Youth He was 
Designed for the Sacred Ministry, | And His Active Life was 
Passed in the Zealous Service of His Master. | The Diocese of Nova 
Scotia, over which He Presided | For Upwards of Twenty-five 
Years | Has Severely Felt and Deeply Deplored the Loss of | Its 
Beloved Diocesan. 

Inscription on the window erected to Mrs. John Inglis in St. 
Paul's Church, Rusthall: 

Faith Which Worketh Love, | In Memory of a Beloved Mother, | 
ELIZA INGLIS, Widow of the j RIGHT REV'D JOHN INGLIS, 
D. D., Lord Bishop of Nova Scotia, | Born April 15th, 1781, ] Died 
July 14th, 1862. 

On Mrs. Inglis' monument is the following: 

Eliza Inglis, Widow of the \ Right Rev'd John Inglis, | D. D., 
Bishop of Nova Scotia, | Born April 15th, 1781, | Died July 14th, 
1862. 

Children of the Right Rev. John Inglis, D. D., and his wife 

Elizabeth (Cochran) : 

i Charles, b. July 13, 1804, at Halifax. 

ii Jane Louisa, b. May 5, 1806, in London. 

iii Arabella Prevost, b. April 3, 1808, at Halifax. 

iv Catherine Anne Prevost, b. May 10, 1810, Halifax. 

V Elizabeth Jemima, b. June 30, 1812, at Halifax. 

vi John Eardley Wilmot, b. Nov. 15, 1814, at Halifax. 

vii William Cochrane, b. Dec. 16, 1816, at Halifax, bap. Jan. 

31, 1817, d. Feb. 1, 1817, at Halifax, 
viii Thomas Cochrane, b. May 22, 1819, at Halifax, bap. July 

14, 1819. 



710 KING'S COUNTY 

Of these children, Charles^, b. July 13, 1804, was admitted to 
King's College, "Windsor, in 1819, studied medicine in London, re- 
turned to Nova Scotia, but never practised, and finally died at the 
house of Mrs. Nancy Rutherford, in Aylesford, in July, 1861; he 
was buried July 26th, directly behind St, Mary's Church. Al- 
though King's College fared so generously at his hands, the cor- 
poration of that college did not erect a tombstone to his memory, 
nor was one ever reared. Jane Louisa^, d. September 4, 1897 ; Ara- 
bella Prevost^, d. in 1891 ; Catherine Ann Prevost^, d. in 1893 ; and 
Elizabeth Jemima^ (Mrs. Kilvington) d. in 1890; all four being 
buried in Brompton Cemetery. William Cochrane^ is buried in the 
Cochran tomb in Halifax, 

Of the children of Bishop John Inglis, none were married but 
Elizabeth^ and Sir John Eardley Wilmot^. Elizabeth was married 
to Lieutenant Francis Henry Kilvington, of the 2nd Staffordshire 
Foot, who was born June 20, 1817, and died July 25, 1855. He was 
the only son of Rev. Orfeur Kilvington and Hon. Mary Margaret, 
his wife. His death occurred on board the S. S. "Melita" as she 
was entering the harbor of Malta, when he was returning from the 
Crimea to England, His commissions were: Ensign, July 20, 1838; 
Lieutenant, January 8, 1841; Captain of the 62nd (Wiltshire) Foot, 
March 12, 1848, Captain and Mrs. Kilvington left one son. Cap- 
tain Thomas Cochrane^ Inglis was appointed Second Lieutenant in 
the Rifle Brigade, June 14, 1839 ; Lieutenant, April 14, 1843 ; Cap- 
tain, December 29, 1848, 

Sir John Eardley Wilmot^ Inglis (Bishop John^, Bishop Charles^). 
Of the children of Bishop John^ and Elizabeth (Cochran) Inglis, 
and indeed of Nova Scotians of his generation, Sir John Eardley 
Wilmot^ Inglis is by far the most distinguished. He entered the 
army as Ensign in the 32nd Foot (now Cornwall Light Infantry), 
August 2, 1833, and his successive promotions were as follows : 
Lieutenant, 1839 ; Captain, 1843 ; Major, 1848 ; Brevet Lieut.-Colonel, 
1849 ; Regimental Lieut.-Colonel, February 20, 1855 ; Brevet Colonel, 
June 5, 1855. He served in Canada from 1836 to 1838, and in the 
Punjaub campaigns in 1848, '49. He was in command of the 32nd 



FAMILY SKETCHES 711 

at Luekuow at the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny in 1857, and suc- 
ceeded Sir Henry Lawrence in full command, as Brigadier-General, 
in July, 1857. For his successful defence of the residency of Luck- 
now in 1857, he was appointed Major-General, and honoured with 
the title of K. C. B. In boyhood he had studied at King's College, 
Nova Scotia, having been admitted there in 1831, and that college 
conferred on him, in 1858, as did also the University of Oxford, the 
degree of D. C. L. After his defence of Lucknow the Legislature of 
Nova Scotia presented him with a sword of honour, the blade of 
which was made of steel from Nova Scotia iron. Sir John mar- 
ried, in 1851, the Hon. Julia Selina Thesiger, second daughter of the 
first Lord Chelmsford, born in 1833, who, with her three children, 
was present in the Lucknow residency throughout the defence. 
Lady Inglis long held the honorary position of housekeeper of the 
State apartments at St. James' Palace. She had also a residence, 
''Mayfield," at Beckenham, Kent, and enjoyed a pension of five 
hundred pounds a year in memory of Sir John's services. Her in- 
teresting book, "The Siege of Lucknow, A Diary" published in 
1892, is well known. Sir John died at Homburg, Germany, Septem- 
ber 27, 1862, and was buried in Homburg. Lady Inglis died in 
February, 1904. 

From the New York Times Saturday Review of Books, February 
— , 1904: 

"An eventful life, such as has been the lot of very few women, 
was closed last week with the death, in her seventy-first year, of 
Lady Inglis, wife of the gallant brigadier who stood for the lives 
of the besieged at Lucknow during eighty-seven days in 1857. Lady 
Inglis, who was a daughter of the first Lord Chelmsford, was with 
her husband throughout the defense of Lucknow. She published a 
diary she kept during the terrible siege, and in this, in simple but 
graphic language, told the story of how a handful of men held out 
against frightful odds." 

Children of Sir John Eardley^ Wilmot and Lady Julia Selina 
(Thesiger) Inglis: 

i John Frederic, b. July 16, 1853, Major in the Duke of 
Edinburgh's (Wiltshire) Regiment. He entered the 
army in 1873, and received his Majority March 19, 



712 KING'S COUNTY 

1890. He m. Janet- Alice, daughter of the Rev. Wil- 
liam Thornhill, but has no children, 
ii Charles George, b. March 14, 1855, m. Edith Caroline, 

dau. of the Eev. C. Buckworth. 
iii Alfred Markham, b. Sept. 24, 1856, matric. at Oxford, 
March 9, 1876, m. Ernestine May, dau. of Dean Pigou. 
iv Victoria Alexandrina, b. Mar. 24, 1859, m. to Hubert Ashr 

ton, merchant in Calcutta. 
V Julia Mathilda, b. Nov. 30, 1861, m. to George Herman Col- 
lier, of the India Office. 
vi Rupert Edward, b. May 17, 1863, matric. at Oxford, Jan. 
21, 1882, grad. B. A. 1885, was Curate of Basinstoke, 
and d. unm. 
Of the children of Sir John Eardley Wilmot Inglis, Charles 
George^ has children: Rupert Charles^, b. February 3, 1884; Harold 
John^, b. June 21, 1885. Alfred Markham* has children: John 
Alfred Pigou^, b. May 5, 1893 ; Ernestine Mary, b. April 23, 1895 ; 
Mildred Jane Catherine, b. August 1, 1879; Francis Frederic, b, 
June 22, 1899; Alfred "Walter (twin with Francis Frederic), b. June 
22, 1899. Victoria Alexandrina Ashton* has children: Guy Inglis, 
b. July 18, 1893 ; Percy, b. February 27, 1895 ; Gilbert, b. Sept. 27, 
1896; Hubert, b. February 13, 1898; Ralph, b. August 20, 1899, d. 
September 30, 1899. Julia Mathilda Collier* has children: Evelyn 
MaryS, b. October 20, 1888, d. February 26, 1889 ; Ronald Inglis, b. 
April 30, 1890; John Herman, b. April 13, 1892, d. May 21, 1892; 
Grace Marion, b. June 24, 1893 ; Kenneth Francis, b. March 7, 1896 ; 
Mary Mildred, b. March 18, 1898. 

A nephew of Bishop Charles Inglis, the Reverend Archibald Peane 
Inglis, was also a Nova Scotia clergyman. He was one of the sons 
of the Bishop's brother, Rev. Richard Inglis, and, together with his 
brother Thomas entered Trinity College, Dublin, November 20, 
1768, Archibald being 15 years old and Thomas 16. Among the list 
of graduates of the college, the name of Archibald 
is not found, but Thomas took his degree in 1775. 
Under Bishop Inglis' direction the academy at Windsor 
was opened November 1, 1789, and his nephew, Archi- 
bald, was appointed its "president" for one je&r, the title after- 
wards being changed to "principal." In this position Archibald 



FAMILY SKETCHES 713 

seems to have remained until May or June, 1790, when he was suc- 
ceeded by the Kev. William Cochran, S. T. D., who also at that 
time became the first president of King's College. From 1789 to 
February, 1801, when he died, Rev. Archibald Peane Inglis was set- 
tled at Granville, Annapolis county. His widow, Susanna, died at 
Lower Horton, King's County, December 13, 1842, in her 76th year. 



THE JACKSON FAMILY 

Joseph^ Jackson son of Thomas and Ann, m. in Cornwallis, June 
6, 1775, Phebe, dau. of Stephen and Hannah Loomer. Children: 

i Joseph, b. Feb. 27, 1776, m. Feb. 27, 1816, Mary Ann . 

Children: Eebecca Ann, b. Nov. 26, 1816; Phebe 

Jane, b. Sept. 9, 1819 ; George Frederick, b. Nov. 25, 

1821. 
ii Stephen, b. Jan. 4, 1778, m. April 28, 1808, Eunice, dau. 

of Isaac and Eunice Beach, 
iii William, b. May 17, 1780. 
iv Thomas, b. May 23, 1782. 
V Isaac, b. March 19, 1785, m. Jan. 22, 1808, Hannah, dau. of 

Enoch Steadman. Children: Sarah Allison, b. Aug. 

26, 1810 : Susan, b. Dec. 10, 1812 ; Charles, b. March 

18, 1815; Enoch, b. April 15, 1817; Joseph, b. Sept. 

23, 1819. 
vi Rebecca, twin with Isaac. 
vii George, b. Sept. 17, 1787, m. Dec. 18, 1814, Susannah . 



THE JESS FAMILY 

George^ Jess, probably of a Conn, family, by his wife , had a 

dau. Martha, b. in Cornwallis, Jan. 9, 1783. Joseph^ Jess (George^) 
m. in Cornwallis, Nov. 27, 1797, Sarah, dau. of Theophilus and 
Eleanor Sweet, and had children: Sophia Henrietta, b. Aug. 26, 
1798; Eunice, b. Sept 28, 1800; Jane, b. Nov. 29, 1802. George2 jess, 
Jr. (George^), m. Jan. 2, 1808, Charlotte, dau. of Samuel and Sarah 
Huntley. They had a son, William, b. Jan. 2, 1822, 



714 KING'S COUNTY 

THE JOHNSON FAMILY 

The Johnson family of Horton was founded by John Johnson, b. 
in Ellerton, East Riding of Yorkshire, and his wife Sarah (Wall- 
gate), who came to N. S. with many other Yorkshire people in 
1775. The Johnsons had the following children born in Ellerton: 
i George, b Sept. 27, 1749, m. Mary Cleveland. 

ii William, m. Peck, probably a dau. of Silas and 

Elizabeth (Calkins) Peck, and probably their son 
was Benjamin, m. Feb. 8, 1810, Hannah Griffin, and 
had children: James Thomas, b. Oct. 28, 1810; Cyrus 
Peck, b. Nov. 13, 1812 ; Eliza, b. July 23, 1815 ; Mary, 
b. March 15, 1818 ; Sarah, b. Aug. 9, 1820. 

iii Joseph, m. (1) Reid, (2) Feb. 25, 1790, Ann Whitney. 

iv John, m. his cousin, a dau. of Richard Wallgate. 
V Emma, m. Dec. 23, 1779, to Jeptha Elderkin, See Elderkin 
Family. 

George^ Johnson (John^), b. in Ellerton, Eng., Sept. 27, 1749, m. 
in Horton, April 27, 1780, Mary, dau. of Benjamin and Mary (El- 
derkin) Cleveland, b. May 16, 1761, a sister of Mrs. Cornelius Fox 
and Mrs. Hugh Pudsey. He d. at Wolfville, Sept. 18, 1834. She d. 
Nov 22, 1839. Children : 

i Sarah Wallgate, b. June 30, 1782, m. Sept. 29, 1808, to 
Clarke Young, of Falmouth, Hants county, and d. at 
Falmouth, June 9, 1870. Children: William Henry 
Young; George Johnson Young; Edward Young, 
Ph. D. (for many years Chief of the Bureau of 
Statistics at Washington, D. C. ) ; Mary Young ; Mar- 
garet Allison Young. 

ii Mary, b. Oct. 5, 1785, m. in 1807, to Thomas Harding, of 
St. John, N. B., at one time Mayor of St. John, and 
had 7 children. 

iii John, b. Jan. 10, 1788, m. Rosamond Lewis, of Cumberland 
county, N. S., and d. at Greenwich, Horton, May 15, 
1862. Children : George Leander, b. Feb. 4, 1816 ; 
Mary Ann, b. July 21, 1818 ; John William, b. July 
21, 1821; Eunice Elvira, b. May 14, 1823; Jessie 
Lewis ; Edwin ; Frederic. 

iv William, M. P. P., b. April 19, 1790, m. (1) Feb. 6, 1812, 
Ann, dau. of David and Sarah (Travis) Harris, (2) 
Jan. 20, 1822, Hannah Pettingill, of St. John, N. B. 
He d. at Wolfville, Dec. 1, 1861. Children by 1st 
wife; Eliza Ann, b. Aug. 18, 1812; Sarah Louisa, b. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 715 

Feb. 3, 1814; Mary Olivia, b. Feb. 12, 1816; Maria 
Henrietta, b. May 27, 1818. Children by 2d wife: 
Thomas, and Rhoda Sophia, twins, b. Feb. 3, 1823 ; 
Hannah Maria, b. June 6, 1824; James Pettingill, b. 
April 4, 1826; Dr. George Chapin, b. July 8, 1829; 
Charles Young, b. March 11, 1835; Andrew Hay, b. 
July 26, 1836. The first wife of William Johnson d. 
July 4, 1819. 

V Ann A., b. Jan. 16, 1793, m. (1) Oct. 18, 1814, to Chris- 
topher Kimball Prince, (2) in 1847, to John Huston 
Chipman. She d. at Lawrencetown, Annapolis 
county, Feb. 21, 1879. 

vi Joseph, b. March 15, 1795, d. young. 

vii Emma, d. young. 

viii Benjamin, d. young. 

ix Olivia Sophia, b. March 22, 1801, m. March 20, 1821, 
James Pettingill, merchant and shipowner of St. 
John, N. B., and d. s. p., Dec. 8, 1886. 



THE JOHNSTONE FAMILY 

One of the most distinguished families Nova Scotia has ever had 
is the Johnstone family, who have been connected closely with the 
city of Halifax and with the counties of Annapolis and King's. The 
family of the Johnstones, of Annandale, Scotland, were first settled 
in Georgia, where at the time of the Revolution Dr. William Martin 
(or Moreton) Johnstone served as a captain on the Tory side. He 
married in Savannah, Georgia, Nov. 21, 1779, Elizabeth Lichten- 
stein, and after completing his medical education in Edinburgh, 
settled as a physician in the Island of Jamaica. For the health of 
one of her daughters, in the summer of 1806 Mrs. Johnstone came 
to Halifax, and her visit here in time led to the removal perma- 
nently of her and all her living children to Nova Scotia. Dr. John- 
stone himself died in Kingston, Jamaica, Dec. 9, 1807. Mrs. John- 
stone d. in Halifax, Sept. 24, 1848. The children of Dr. and Mrs. 
William Martin Johnstone were : Andrew Lichtenstein, b. March 22, 
1781 ; Catharine, b. Aug. 23, 1782 ; Lewis, M. D., b. March 10, 1784 ; 
John William, b. May 20, 1785; Elizabeth Wildman, b. Dec. 15, 
1787, m. to Thomas Ritchie, Esq., M. P. P., of Annapolis Royal, and 



716 KING'S COUNTY 

became the ancestress of the Kitchie family of Halifax, one of her sons 
being the Hon. Chief Justice, Sir William Ritchie, Kt., who d. in 
1892; Laleah Peyton, b. Feb. 15, 1789, m. to Hon. William Bruce 
Almon, M. D., at Halifax, and had ten children, the eldest son being 
Hon. William Johnstone Almon, M. D., Dominion Senator; John, b. 
Jan. 31, 1790, a lawyer and M. P. P. for Annapolis county; Jane 
Farley, b. May 29, 1791, d. June 4, 1793; Hon. Judge James Wil- 
liam, a distinguished Nova Scotia statesman and political leader, 
whose services to the province at large, and whose influence with 
the Baptist denomination in King's County, were very great; Jane 
Farley, b. April 3, d. in July, 1794. 

Of these children, Dr. Lewis^ Johnstone practised medicine 
in Jamaica, and in Halifax, but finally settled in Wolfville in 1839. 
There in leisure he spent the rest of his life, at his place, "Annan- 
dale," which had formerly belonged to Daniel DeWolf, Esq., 
M. P. P. He m. in Halifax, the Bishop officiating, Feb. 21, 1817, 
Mary Anne, eldest daughter of John and Sarah (Stevens) Pryor, 
bap. in St. Paul's parish, Halifax, June 4, 1797, this, however, being 
some time before he left Jamaica. Facts for a complete sketch of 
descendants are not at hand, but of his children, some of whom were 
born in Jamaica, some in Nova Scotia, the following list can be given 
the order of their births, however, being somewhat uncertain : 
Catherine, m. to Eev. Abram Spurr Hunt, M. A. ; Marianne, d. 
young; Jane, d. unm. in Wolfville; Elizabeth, m. Dec. 5, 1843, as 
his 2nd wife, to Rev. Edmund Albern Crawley, D. D., D. C. L. ; 
Laleah, m. to Rev. Richard E. Burpee, M. A. ; Lewis, Jr., M. D., 
b. March 6, 1824, d. Jan. 31, 1799, m. June 6, 1850, Anna Sneden 
Thorne, dau. of Stephen Sneden Thorne, M. P. P., and his wife 
Mehitable (Patten), and sister of James Hall Thorne, of Kentville; 
William, b in 1825, d. young; Louisa, b. July 10, 1825, m. June 28, 
1860, to James Donaldson, b. April 23, 1834, and became the mother 
of John Donaldson, of Cornwallis, Emma Louise, wife of John Rufus 
Starr, of Cornwallis, and of Rev. Lewis Johnstone Donaldson, 
Rector of Trinity Church, Halifax ; William, M. D., m. July 1, 1863, 
Susan Alice, dau. of Joseph Francis and Mary A. (Cogswell) Alii- 



FAMILY SKETCHES 717 

son; Lawrence; Henry W., m. Theresa Frances, dau. of Hon. 
Michael, ^I. L. C, and Jean (Grassie) Tobin, of Halifax; Laura, 
m. to Rev. Arthur Richard Ralph Crawley, M. A.; Emma, m. to 
Rev. Elisha Budd De Mille, M. A., b. in St. John, N. B., April 7, 
1829, d. in St. John, Aug. 1, 1863; Annie M., m. Jan. 5, 1859, to 
Henry Lovett, of Kentville, and d. March 30, 1906; Minnie (Lady 
Weatherbe), m. in 1864 to Sir Robert Linton Weatherbe, Kt., long 
a Judge of the Supreme Bench and sometime Chief Justice of Nova 
Scotia; Gustavus d. young. 

Sir Robert Linton Weatherbe, Kt., was born at Bedeque, Prince 
Edward Island, April 7, 1836, and graduated at Acadia (B. A., 1858 ; 
M. A., 1861), from this university in 1883 receiving the honorary 
degree of D. C. L. He studied law with Hon. Judge James William 
Johnstone, whose niece he afterward married, and after an excep- 
tionally successful career at the bar, during which he was made 
Q. C, in 1878 was appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court, and 
Jan, 13, 1905, Chief Justice of Nova Scotia. He was knighted in 
1906, and resigned the Chief Justiceship in 1907. He spends his 
winters in Halifax, but his summers at his place in King's County, 
''St. Eulalie," near Grand Pre. 

Connected with the county in his early life, as a young prae- 
tioner of law in Kentville, was also Hon. Judge James Wil- 
liami Johnstone, M. L. C, long highly distinguished in the 
province, and indeed in Canada at large. He m. (1) Amelia, dau. 
of William James, M. D., and Rebecca Byles Almon, of Halifax, (2) 
Mrs, Louisa (Pry or) Wentworth, dau, of John and Sarah (Stevens) 
Pryor, and widow of Capt. Samuel Henry Wentworth, R. E., son 
of Benning and Anne (Bird) Wentworth, and nephew of Lady 
Frances Wentworth. By his 1st marriage he had children: Eliza, 
b. in 1821, m. as his 1st wife, to Hon. D. McNeil Parker, 
M. D., M. L. C, of Halifax; Judge James William, b. probably in 
1824, graduated at Acadia University in 1843, made D C. L. by 
Acadia in 1886, a Judge of the County Court, m, Katharine Pres- 
cott Fairbanks, dau. of Hon. John Eleazer and Ann (Prescott) Fair- 
banks of Halifax, b. Dec. 4, 1820, and had a family, well known in 



718 KING'S COUNTY 

Halifax ; Amelia ; William Almon, m. 1833, Mary, 2nd dan. of Hon. 
Samuel George William Archibald. (See the Dickson Family) ; 
Lewis, M. D., m. Dodd. He had also children by his 2nd mar- 
riage. 



THE JORDAN FAMILY 

This family is p;robably descended from Rev. Robert and Sarah 
(Winter) Jordan, of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, whose fourth son, Jede- 
diah, founded a large family in Maine, but from the ''Jordan 
Memorial," published in 1882, the parentage of the founder of the 
King's County family cannot be ascertained. 

"^ Jedediahi Jordan, b. Feb. 11, 1755, m. in Horton, Dec. 25, 1781, 
Asenath Bill, b. July 16, 1763, probably a dau. of Amos and Jerusha 
Bill, formerly of Lebanon and Colchester, Conn. Bill Family 
Memoir, p. 158. Children: Asenath, b. Nov. 6, 1782; Jerusha, b. 
Nov. 28, 1783; Amos Bill, b. Aug. 19, 1785, m. Jerusha Kinsman; 
Jedediah, Jr.., b. Dec. 21, 1786, m, Lydia Benjamin; Orinda, b. Oct. 
17, 1788; Sarah, b. Feb. 3, 1790; Miriam, b. Aug. 19, 1792; Melinda, 
b. Sept. 6, 1795. 

Amos Bill2 Jordan (Jedediah^), b. Aug. 19, 1785, m. in Horton, 
Jan. 12, 1816, Jerusha Kinsman. Children: Eunice, b. Nov. 29, 
1816; Mary Mehitable, b. Jan. 29, 1818; Robert Kinsman, b. Feb. 
6, 1819 ; Rebecca, b. Feb. 10, 1821 ; William, b. Dec. 29, 1822 . This 
family lived at Beech Hill, Horton. 

Jedediah^ Jordan, Jr., (Jedediah^), b. Dec. 21, 1786, m. in Hor- 
ton, Jan. 7, 1813, Lydia Benjamin. Children: Eunice, b. Aug. 19, 
1816, d. unm. ; Thomas, b. Aug. 16, 1818 ; Michael, b. Oct. 12, 1821 ; 
Andrew, b. Oct. 28, 1823; Jehiel; Jacob, went to Australia; Lydia 
Orinda, m. to Isaac Marriner Cleveland, son of William and Mary 
(Patton) Cleveland, b. March 27, 1833; Grandison. m. Sept. 14, 
1851, Nancy Cleveland, dau. of William and Mary (Patton) Cleve- 
land, b. Jan. 11, 1830, and lives in Canning. It is said that there 
were in all 13 children. 







FAMILY SKETCHES 719 

MichaeP Jordan (Jedediah^, Jr., Jedediahi), b. Oct. 12, 1821, m. 
Oliva Eagles, dan. of Jeremiah and (Coldwell) Eagles. Chil- 
dren: Noble, d. yonng; Henry Alonzo, a well known merchant in 
Boston, of the firm of Bigelow and Jordan, m. Elizabeth Duberneck, 
who d. J. p., Sept. 13, 1907; Margaret, d. young; Augusta, m. to 
Charles A. Schofield. of Medford, Mass.; Sophia, d. young; Ella, 
m. to Harmon Schofield; Leverett, m. Cassie Mclntyre; Frederick, 
d. young ; Charles, m. Lillie Butcher. 

JehieP, Jedediah^, Jedediah^, b. about 1825, m. twice. Children 
by first wife : Edgar ; Alonzo ; Everett. Children by 2nd wife : 
Ethel, m. to Benjamin Sears, of Barnstable county, Mass. ; Chester. 



THE KEMPTON FAMILY 

The Rev. Samuel Bradford Kempton, D. D., now of Dartmouth, 
N. S., but for many years the honoured third pastor of the Cornwal- 
lis First Baptist Church, in succession to the Rev. Abram Spurr 
Hunt, is the son of Stephen and Olivia Harlowe (Locke) Kempton, 
and was b. at Milton, Queen's county, Nov. 2, 1834. He received 
his early education at Milton Academy, and in 1857 entered Horton 
Academy. In 1862 he graduated, B. A., at Acadia University. He 
then spent a year at Acadia under the instruction of Rev. John 
Mockett Cramp, D. D., in post-graduate work. In 1833 he was 
ordained pastor of Third Horton Baptist Church, and in 1867 
became pastor of the First Cornwallis Baptist Church. In that 
position he remained until 1893, when he removed to Dartmouth, as 
pastor of the Dartmouth Baptist Church, Dr. Kempton received 
his M. A., from Acadia University in 1872, and the honorary degree 
of D. D. in 1894. From 1878 to 1907 he was one of the governors 
of Acadia, and in 1882 was appointed a member of the Senate of the 
University. His ministry at Cornwallis was laborious and faithful, 
he had six preaching stations and was obliged to travel many 
miles every week. He married in Horton, Oct. 1, 1867, Eliza Alli- 
son, dau. of Abraham and Nancy Rebecca (Allison) Seaman, and 
had two children : Rev. Austin Tremaise, b. Feb. 6, 1870, m. June 7, 



720 KING'S COUNTY 

1893 , Charlotte H. Freeman ; William Bradford, b. May 29, 1885, d. 
July 17, 1893. 

Of these sons, Rev. Austin Tremaise Kempton graduated at Acadia 
University in 1891, and received his M. A. in course in 1894. He 
was ordained to the Baptist ministry at Milton, Queen's county, 
N. S., in 1891, later studied at Newton Theological Seminary, and 
has since held pastorates in Sharon, Boston, Fitchburg and Lunen- 
burg, Mass. He has also been a successful lecturer, his lectures on 
the ''Acadian Country" having done much to make the charms of 
King's County known throughout New England. 



THE KIDSTON FAMILY 

The Cornwallis Kidston family came late to the county, and 
directly from Halifax. They were a Scotch family, and the only 
thing we at present know about their early history in the province 
is that a Mr. Kidston, a "neighbor" of the Rev. Jacob Bailey in 
Kennebeck, Maine, came, like Mr. Bailey, but earlier, to Halifax 
from Maine. This person was possibly William Kidston, who, with 
his wife, Catherine, we know to have been in Halifax shortly after 
the Revolutionary War. In the history of the Stairs and Morrow 
families of Halifax, the Hon. William James Stairs, compiler of that 
history has an interesting notice of the Kidston family. Mr. 
Stairs says that Richard Kidston, a son of William and Catherine, 
was born "on the old corner of George street and Bedford Row," in 
Halifax, in 1786, and that for years he exported lumber to Great 
Britain from the Miramichi river and Pictou, in return bringing 
British goods to Nova Scotia, and selling them from his store in the 
Market Square. About 1810 he removed with his sons to Glasgow, 
leaving, however, one son, in partnership with two Englishmen, 
Messrs. Dobson and Telford, to conduct the Nova Scotia end of the 
business. In Scotland Richard Kidston amassed a considerable for- 
tune, his family gaining much prominence in church and state. His 
children, so far as we know them, from the register of St. Matthew's 
Church, Halifax, and otherwise, were : Richard, b. in 1786 ; William, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 721 

bap. I\lay 22, 1788 ; Catherine, bap. April 22, 1792 ; Archibald Glen, 
bap. Nov. 9, 1799 ; Kobert Alexander, bap. Dec. 1, 1799. 

But James and Alexander Kidston were also merchants in Hali- 
fax, and in partnership, before 1800. That they were nearly related 
to William Kidston is most likely, but what the relationship was 
we do not know. In 1798, and probably other years, James Kid- 
ston, commission merchant, continually advertises the sale of dry 
goods, groceries, books, and many other things. James Kidston, 
bachelor, and Margaret Hosterman, spinster, were married in St. 
Matthew's Parish, January 5, 1793. Alexander Kidston and 
Catherine Hosterman were married, August 7, 1795, Sometime 
after 1825, James Kidston with his family (or possibly the father 
had died) must have come to Cornwallis. There, June 25, 1844 
(Records of St. John's Parish), Margaret (Hosterman) Kidston was 
buried, "aged 74," and there for many years the sons and daughters 
were known. The children of James and Margaret (Hosterman) 
Kidston, all baptized in St. Matthew's parish, Halifax, were: 
Margaret, bap. Nov. 17, 1793; Anne, bap. March 8, 1795, buried 
in Cornwallis, Dec. 31, 1845 ; James, bap. Aug, 21, 1796 ; Alexander, 
bap. June 3, 1798 ; Catherine, bap,. Jan. 31, 1800, m. Nov. 23, 1828, 
to Henry Gesner, Jr. ; Eliza, bap. July 25, 1802 ; Richard William, 
bap, June 1, 1805 ; Charlotte, bap. Sept. 3, 1809. [For many years 
the Misses Margaret, Eliza, and Charlotte Kidston, were devout 
members of St. James Church, Kentville]. 

In 1796, a Richard Kidston was foreman of the Grand Jury in 
Halifax, and June 17, 1819, a Richard Kidston and Elizabeth. 
Oonald were married in Halifax. In 1814 a Richard Kidston 
was Counsellor and Attorney in Halifax, and in 1834, the Legisla- 
ture dissolved the marriage of Anne and Richard Kidston. William 
Kidston, (probably son of William and Catherine) and his wife 
Elizabeth, had children bap. in St. Matthew's: Katherine Glen, 
bap. Sept. 4, 1820; Elizabeth Ann, bap. Dec. 30, 1823; Alexander 
Robert, bap. Feb. 23, 1825; Janet, bap. June 1, 1829. It is quite 
possible that the whole Kidston family in Halifax may have been 
founded by a still older Mr. Kidston than any we have mentioned, 



722 KING'S COUNTY 

that he may have been Mr. Bailey's neighbor at Kennebec, and 
that he may have been the father of William, who m. Catherine; 
James, who m. Margaret Hosterman; Alexander, who m, Catherine 
Hosterman; and Richard, who was foreman of the Grand Jury 
in 1796. 



THE KINSMAN FAMILY 

One of the Cornwallis grantees was Benjamin Kinsman, formerly 
of Ipswich Mass., who was born in Ipswich, April 26,"^ 1719. He was 
the youngest son of Joseph and Susanna (Dutch) Kinsman, and he 
m. in 1740 (published Dec. 27) Elizabeth, dau. of Robert and 
Elizabeth (Douton) Perkins, of Ipswich. In 1763 he sold his land 
in Ipswich to John Calef, physician. He d. in 1794; his widow 
d. in 1806. Children: 

i Elizabeth, b. Oct. 20, 1741. 

ii Benjamin, b. Nov. 3, 1743, m. Hannah Pelton, Children: 
Jerusha, b. June 12, 1762; Ruby, b. in Norwich, Conn. 
July 25, 1766; Wealthy, b. in Cornwallis, Nov. 19, 
1767; Achsah, b. Get. 24, 1769; Perkins, b. July 28, 
1771 ; Jeremiah, b. Dec. 12, 1774 ; Hannah, b. Jan. 20, 
1780; Eunice, b. July 4, 1785, m. Robert Sharp; Benja- 
min Avery, b. Dec. 2, 1787, m. Mary English, 
iii Nathaniel, b. Aug. 13, 1745, m. May 2, 1768, Sarah, dau. of 
Hezekiah and Susanna (Bailey) Cogswell, and had at 
least 8 children, one of whom, Ebenezer, m. Nov. 23, 
1803, Mary, dau. of Joshua and Mehitable Ells; 
another, Ezekiel, m. (1) April 12, 1798, Mary, dau. 
of Joseph and Hannah Chase, (2) April 30, 1812, 
Mary, dau. of John and Rebecca Nesbitt. By his first 
marriage Ezekiel had daus. : Hannah, b. June 11, 1801 ; 
Sarah Ann. m. to John Marshall Caldwell, High Sher- 
iff of King's County, 
iv Robert, b. May 27, 1747, m. ( 1) Dec. 9, 1772, Jerusha, dau. 
of Capt. Amos and Jerusha Bill, (2) Oct. 13, 1782, 
Mehitable, dau. of Caleb and Mary Rand. By his 1st 
marriage he had 4 children, by his 2nd, 7. His son 
Amos, by his 1st marriage, b. Sept. 18, 1777, m. Abigail 
Chase; his dau. Sarah, by his 1st marriage, b. Sept. 21, 
1776, was m. April 17, 1794, to Jedediah Ells ; his son 



FAMILY SKETCHES 723 

James, by his 1st marriage, b. Dec. 14, 1780, m. Dor- 
othy Chase. 

V Ebenezer, b. June 2, d. June 17, 1750. 

vi Ebenezer, b. Aug. 10, 1751. 

vii Susanna, b. June 17, 1753, m. to Capt. Ebenezer Wheaton. 

viii Joseph, b, Dec. 16, 1760, m, Sarah Foster. 

ix Mary, b. Aug. 13, 1763. 

A Kinsman Genealogy, some of whose statements concerning the 
King's County Kinsmans could be corrected by the Cornwallis Town 
Book, was published in Boston in 1876. For fuller information con- 
cerning the family that Genealogy should be consulted. 



THE LAIRD OR LEARD FAMILY 

Robert Laird or Leard, who came from Ireland about 1770, m. 
in Windsor, N. S., Jane Palmer, probably a sister of the wife of 
Sheriff John Thomas Hill, and had children b. in Windsor : Samuel, 
b. Jan. 20, 1775; Mary, b. June 12, 1776; Elizabeth, b. Feb. 26, 
1778, m. to John McNeil Stewart. He had born in Horton : Sarah, 
b. Aug. 29, 1779; Eleanor, b. Aug. 29, 1781; John, b. March 2, 
1783, m. Julia, dau. of John and Eunice (Denison) Lothop, b. 
March 8, 1790 ; William, b. May 2, 1785 ; Catherine, b. March 14, 
1792. 

James Laird, a surveyor, well known for many years in Horton, 
was probably a grandson, of Robert Laird. He m. May 4, 1857, 
Mary Elizabeth, b. Oct. 1, 1825, dau. of Charles and Fanny 
(Lothrop) Brown. Their eldest child was Edward Brown Laird, 
b. June 24, 1858. Robert Laird bought land in Horton ' ' afterward 
occupied by William Stewart and the family of Robert L, Stewart." 



THE LAWRENCE FAMILY 

Col. Elisha Lawrence, who settled in Parrsborough after the 
Revolutionary War, and was one of the first church wardens there, 
according to Sabine was a son of John Lawrence, of Monmouth 
county, N. J., and at the outbreak of the Revolution was Sheriff of 



724 KING'S COUNTY 

Monmouth county. Both father and son sympathized strongly with 
the Revolution, and Col, Elisha Lawrence raised a corps of 500 men, 
which became the First Battalion of New Jersey Volunteers. In 
1777 he was taken prisoner by Sullivan on Staten Island, and at 
the peace "retired with the Royal Army, with his rank of Colonel, 
and on half pay." In Parrsborough he received a grant of land, 
and for some time lived there. Finally, however, he went to Eng- 
land, and in 1811 died at Cardigan, Wales. He married in New Jer- 
sey, Mary, daughter of Lewis Morris Ashfield (a sister of the first 
wife of the Rev. Thomas Shreve), of whose death a New York news- 
paper of April 19, 1779, spoke in the following way: "Wednesday 
morning, died in her 27th year, Mrs. Mary Lawrence, the amiable 
consort of Lieut.-Colonel Elisha Lawrence, of Brigadier-General 
Skinner's Brigade, and daughter of the Hon. Lewis Ashfield, Esq., 
of Monmouth county, in New Jersey, deceased; and on Thursday 
her remains were deposited in the family burying ground iuj 
Trinity Churchyard." New Jersey Archives, 2nd Series, Vol. 3, p. 
252. Of Col. Lawrence 's children, if he had any, we have no record. 
The first fellow church warden of Col. Elisha Lawrence in Parrs- 
borough, Col. Edward Cole, was probably a son of Elisha and 
Elizabeth (Dexter) Cole, and a Rhode Island Loyalist. Col. Cole 
commanded a regiment under Wolfe at Quebec, was subsequently at 
Havana, and when the Revolution began fled from persecution to 
the British lines. In the British service he had the rank of Colonel, 
and after the war received a pension of a hundred and fifty pounds 
a year. Like many other Loyalist officers he obtained land in Parrs- 
borough and settled there. ^ 



THE LOCKHART FAMILY 

The Lockhart family of Horton is of Scotch-Irish origin, but pre- 
cisely when it was transplanted to Nova Scotia we do not know. 
From information furnished by Rev. Arthur John Lockhart 
("Pastor Felix") we learn that in the latter part of the 18th cen- 
tury there were born three Lockhart brothers, Nathan, Elihu and 



FAMILY SKETCHES 725 

David, the second of whom, Elihu, settled in Hantsport, N. S., the 
third, David, probably first in Horton, then in Cambridge, Mass., 
the first Nathan, making his home permanently in King's County. 
Of these brothers David Loekhart, who settled in East Cambridge, 
Mass., originated the widely known Loekhart Casket Manufactory 
and undertaking business in Boston and Cambridge, of which busi- 
ness his eldest son, William Lawson Loekhart, was long the chief 
proprietor and manager. This family is well known in Massachu- 
setts. 

"My grandfather, Nathan Loekhart," says the Eev. Arthur John 
Loekhart, "settled in that part of Lower Horton, bordering on 
Hants county, which lies on a slope of the South Mountain, com- 
manding an extensive and beautiful view of the Avon River, at 
its debouchment into Minas Basin, the Basin itself, Cheverie, New- 
port and Summerville, Blomidon, the Five Islands, and the shores 
of Cumberland County. This part of King's County was then 
covered with forest, and grandfather's first house was a log house, 
which was afterward supplanted by a little cottage house, to which 
was added an ell. I have heard my grandmother say half humour- 
ously, half pettishly: 'I married for love, and came into the woods 
for the owls to hoot at,' for grandfather was a seafaring man, in 
the coasting trade, and was liable to absences of several weeks at a 
time. Grandmother Loekhart was Eliza Fuller, and belonged to a 
family of that name in Lower Horton whose forbears were among 
the immigrants who came from Connecticut, after the removal of 
the Acadians. I have met in Suffield, Conn,, a family of Fullers, 
who seemed to me to bear some racial resemblance to those I had 
known in Horton. My grandmother was a capable housewife, an 
entertaining gossip and love of music, good looking and sprightly, 
who lived to a great age. ' ' 

Of his grandfather, Mr. Loekhart says : 

"Grandfather Loekhart was of Scotch-Irish ancestry. He was a 
sturdy man, strongly built, and of a good physique. He was an 
honest, upright man, much respected, a Methodist and a strict Sab- 
batarian. There was in him a strain of seriousness and severity. 



726 KING'S COUNTY 

and also of meditative melancholy. I have seen him sitting at the 
window, humming a tune, and gazing into the distance, absorbed 
in thought, and knew by experience his unwillingness to be dis- 
turbed. He exacted obedience from his family, and provided for 
them in a frugal way, though their opportunity for education and 
for chances to gain a livelihood apart from the sea were small. He 
was an athletic man, and in his younger days was quick to resent 
an injury, or to act in self-defence. Children (order not known) : 

i Mary Ann, m. to John Porter of Avonport, and had chil- 
dren: William, a trader, sometime postmaster at 
Lockhartville ; Harding ; Lockhart. 

ii Ann Eliza, m. to James McWilliams. Mr. Lockhart says : 
''I remember her as a tall, fair young woman, with 
dark, curling hair. He had one child, Annie, who 
lived to grow up and be married. The mother died 
when her child was very young, and Annie was 
brought up by Capt. Peleg Holmes of Lockhartville. 
Mr. and Mrs. McWilliams are both buried in the little 
hillside burial yard. 

iii Emeline, m. to Capt. Mark Shaw, at first a sailor, later a 
ship-chandler in New York. She had .one child, Em- 
eline, at whose birth she died. 

iv Silas, m. and had one dau. Melissa. He d. young, and his 
dau. was brought up by her Uncle Andrew. 

V. Andrew, m. Katherine Graves, of Halifax. He had no 
children who lived, but he and his wife brought up 
up several, — his niece Melissa, Robert Burton, son of 
Rev. William Burton, Elvira Hume, dau. of a cousin 
of Mrs. Lockhart, and one or two more. The niece 
Melissa was m. to Capt. McKeeman. 

vi Capt. Nathan Albert (third son), b. May 13, 1819, m. Eliza- 
beth Ann Bezanson. 

vii Leonard, m. Sarah Armstrong, of Lubec, Me., and d. s. p. 

viii Ephraim, m. Lucy Smith, and has a son, Joseph Smith Lock- 
hart, M. D., a prominent physician in Cambridge, 
Mass. He has also a son, Benjamin, an attorney in 
Boston, Mass. ; and a son Ephraim, living in Lockhart- 
ville. A son, Mortimer, died at Mt. Allison College. 
He was an unusual boy, of fine character and talents, 
and with a strong literary and poetical vein. 

ix John Weston (youngest son), m. Sarah Palmeter of Long 
Island, Horton, and had several daughters. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 727 

Captain Nathan Albert- Lockhart (Nathan^) b. May 13, 1819, 
m. iu 18-48, Elizabeth Ann Bezanson, of Chester, Nova Scotia, dau. 
of John Bezanson, of noble Huguenot ancestry. Of his grand- 
father Bezanson, Rev. A. J. Lockhart says: "He was a Baptist lay 
preacher, and was an intelligent reader and student of divinity. He 
was a man of strong sense and excellent judgment, and ruled and 
guided his family wisely and well. He was a familiar conversationist 
and had a genius for friendship, his attachments being sometimes of a 
romantic kind. He was twice married; first to a woman named 
Hemmeon, by whom he had several children, and, after her death 
to Miss Anderson, who was my mother's mother. My mother had 
relatives in the Gaspereau Valley. John Anderson, her uncle, settled 
there and reared a family who settled round him, I used to visit 
them in cherry time or apple time. Uncle John lived in a low- 
roofed, old-fashioned farm house, with orchard and garden, and long 
rows of currant bushes and trees at the back of the house, full, in 
the season, of luscious red cherries, and tall pear trees in front, of 
which the little sweet pears were to my taste admirable." 

"My mother," says Mr. Lockhart, "was born at Chester, Oct. 20, 
1819, and when about 28 was married to my father. She survived 
her husband several years, and died in her 81st year, April 3, 1900, 
in the home of her youngest daughter, Mrs. Regina Fogg, of Hyde 
Park, Mass. My mother had some of the mental characteristics of 
her father — ^his sprightliness, his strong sense, his friendliness, his 
scorn of meanness. She was like him in his activity in a green old 
age, and in possession of her faculties. She could ride on horse- 
back when a young woman, and was always a good walker. She 
never seemed to grow old, and was always a person of dignity and 
of an attractive presence. In physique, the second son, my brother 
Nathan (Nathan Joseph Lockhart), was the flower of the family. 
When last I saw him he was in the full bloom of manhood. The sea 
claimed him, and some untoward fate was his, we know not what. 
He had just married snd set up a home. His bride was Nancy Whit- 
man, of Aylesford, N. S., who six months after her marriage faced 
the dreadful intelligence that her husband had perished at sea. My 



728 KING'S COUNTY 

mother never wholly recovered from that blow. A son was born to 
him whom he never saw — a second Nathan, who is now a lawyer 
in the Canadian West. His mother was married again to a Baptist 
minister, and had a family of sons and daughters. 

"My parents' third child, Palemon, died in infancy, of a brain 
fever. Next came my brother, the Rev. Burton Wellesley Lockhart, 
D. D., pastor of the Franklin Street Congregationalist Church at 
Manchester, N. H. He m. at Suffield, Conn., Frances M. Upson. In 1894 
he became pastor of the church to which he now ministers." A 
newspaper article on Rev. Burton Wellesley Lockhart, written by 
the Rev. Dr. Trask, says: 

"Perhaps no preacher in the little city to the north of us has 
so many strangers in his congregation, drawn by his pulpit power. 
It is a rare Sunday when there are not some Springfield people in 
the audience. There are also a number who come down regularly 
from the Falls, while visitors from the street, Willimansett and West 
Springfield are not infrequent. Dr. Lockhart is now in the full 
prime of life, and his studies in philosophy and general literature, 
no less than in religion, combine to make him not only a pleasing 
conversationalist, but an instructive and inspiring preacher. . . . 
His parishioners in all of the pastorates he has filled have loved 
him intensely. His gentleness of spirit, united with rare intellectual 
powers, captivates his audience. He has humanity, as the phrenol- 
ogists would say, in a large degree, and his people feel it. He has 
a keen, searching mind, and his people know it, so he is both be- 
loved and admired. Literature is his pastime, preaching his passion. 
He loves philosophy, but truth he adores. A finely shaped and 
good sized head, features clear and well cut, the eyes large and 
dark, and suffused with a mellow and attractive light, are the 
elements of Dr. Lockhart 's physical appearance, which are the most 
impressive and commanding. He was installed as pastor of the 
Franklin Street Congregationalist Church, Manchester, January 
24, 1894. He has written considerable in prose and verse." 

The eldest daughter of Capt. Nathan Albert and Elizabeth Ann 
(Bezanson) Lockhart is Alice Alberta, Mrs. John Bentley of Hali- 



FAMILY SKETCHES 729 

fax, N. S. Another daughter is Regina Elizabeth, m. to Charles 
Fogg, of Cambridge, Mass., whose mother was a Lockhart. The 
youngest son of Capt. Nathan Albert is Albert David, a pharmacist 
in Waterbury, Conn., who has also a place of business at Round 
Hill, Annapolis county, N. S. 

The eldest son of Capt. Nathan Albert and Elizabeth Ann 
(Bezanson) is Rev. Arthur John Lockhart, whose familiar nom 
dc plume is ''Pastor Felix." Mr. Lockhart, who has important 
mention in an earlier part of this book, was b. at Lockhartville, 
King's County, May 5, 1850. He says of himself: 

"My education was wholly in the district school, which was kept 
by a farming neighbor, Mr. William Redden, in a little yellow 
schoolhouse, which was his property, and stood on one corner of his 
lot, — a landmark now gone. This was supplemented by books and 
private studies. I had an early instinct for literature, and was in 
love from my school days with geography, history, biography and 
poetry. The poems of Burns, of Goldsmith, Gray and Thomson fell 
into my hands while yet a child, and I found there food for men- 
tal growth and matter of deep appreciation. To these were soon 
added the poems of Byron and some classical tales such as ''Ras- 
selas" and the ''Vicar of Wakefield," and the dramas of 
Shakespeare. 

' ' Among the books in my father 's house — ^f ew enough — ^were some 
bound copies of Harper's Magazine. These volumes contained the 
Seasons of Thomson, with wood-cut illustrations. With these poems 
I then became familiar — especially the "Spring" and "Summer," 
and to them, in spite of judgment to the contrary, I have ever been 
partial. Then came Beattie's poem and the Odes and Eclogues of 
Collins. Coleridge, Scott, Shelley and Tennyson came later, and 
found their welcome, but my taste was formed upon the earlier 
masters. Cowper and Burns and Wordsworth have ever been fa- 
vorites of mine. 

"Dr. Brown (Edward L. Brown, of Wolfville) was in my youth 
a literary and poetical mentor. He brought me to an acquaintance 
with Butler and gave me a copy of Hudibras. 



730 KING'S COUNTY 

"When about seventeen years of age I went to Wolfville, N. S., 
and lived, in the home and worked in the office of Mr. Major 
Theakston, who published the Wolfville Acadian. I was with him 
for three years, and we have ever been friends. He visited me this 
month (June, 1909) and was in my house nearly two weeks. For 
over 38 years he has been a city missionary in the city of Halifax, 
residing at 111 Agrieola street. He is the pastor of the North End 
Mission, which he has built up and made an agency of great good 
in the Acadian metropolis. 

"Upon the close of my life at Wolfville, I went to Cambridge, 
Mass., where I lived in the home of my father's uncle, David Lock- 
hart, and worked at the University Press, during one year. There 
I had the opportunity of seeing from time to time, such living lights 
of literature as Longfellow, Lowell, and others of that time. I 
worked on Every Saturday, an illustrated paper of which Thomas 
Bailey Aldrich was editor. That natty, quick stepping little man 
came each week to the office and was often seen walking down the 
composing room. Hudson, the Shakespearian scholar, used often 
to come there. 

"I began to rhyme early, and in fact did so on my slate in school 
when I should have ciphered. I loved figures of speech, and hated 
numerals. They convey little to my mind even at this day. As 
cripple and often invalid, confined to the house in the winter, I had 
as a child loved to rove in summer, and the Valley of the Gaspereau, 
with its dykes, was one of my favorite grounds of recreation. I 
spent weeks with the Trenholms and Andersons in that dear valley. 
Such verses as 'Aeadie,' 'The Alien's Message,' 'Gaspereau,' etc., 
testify to that love. 

"W. G. Macfarlane, writing in the Dominion Illustrated has 
said 'The last named poem (Gaspereau) is the offspring as much 
of the scene it describes as of the poet who wrote it. Any one who 
has been privileged to see the Gaspereau Valley, one of the prettiest 
pictures of quiet, graceful, rural beauties imaginable, will see at 
once that poem is full of the inspiration of the place. Imagine 
yourself on a point of vantage, the bend of a road, crossing a span 



FAMILY SKETCHES 731 

of South Mountain to Gaspereau village. You are on a summit of a 
about 10 miles (?) and a mile of breath. Through its centre flows 
the narrow Gasperau stream, at times foaming over rocks, and 
again rushing along in an unrippled rapid, while the luxuriant wil- 
lows that fringe the banks cast their perfect reflection on the water. 
On its edge is a small mill, looking in the distance like a toy house, 
while it is crossed by a rustic bridge. Surrounding the bridge is a 
little hamlet with a pretty church, and along the side of the valley 
are prosperous, well kept farms, with smiling orchards and grain 
fields, and dotted with patches of spruce and fir. The valley seems 
shut in the hills at both ends, and at its lowest extremity the 
stream broadens into what appears to be a lake — a fancy that 
renders the picture the more romantic. In reality, though, it is the 
estuary of the stream that empties into the Basin of Minas at Grand 
Pre flats, and just beyond the reach of vision is where, over a cen- 
tury since, the English vessels were moored when the memorable 
expulsion took place. ' 

"I entered on the religious life definitely, in 1868, under the pas- 
torate of Kev. Charles Bruce Pibblado, In the autumn of 1871, I 
went to St. Andrews, N. B., to assist him in his pastorate there, and 
used to travel during that winter the country parts of that parish, 
Bocabec, Dydequash, and Maguadavic or St. George. In the early 
summer of 1872 I entered the Methodist Episcopal Conference of 
Eastern Maine, at its session at Orono, under the presidency of 
Bishop Andrews. I was taken on trial, and stationed at the English 
village, Pembroke Iron Works, where I boarded with Mr. Isaac 
Mincher, and afterwards with a family named Dean. I ministered 
to people who came from the Midland of England, who worked in 
the iron foundry as puddlers and nail cutters. The iron workers are 
now gone, and the English village broken up. 

' ' The next year I was married to Miss Adelaide Beckerton, daugh- 
ter of James Beckerton, shipwright and tradesman of St. Andrews, 
N. B., who was four years my senior. She is, if the words of Words- 
worth may be used by me without seeming extravagant, 
'A perfect woman, nobly planned,' 



732 KING'S COUNTY 

who has been to me the source of my choicest 
earthly blessing, social and domestic. We were married at 
her father's house, on the 12th of May, 1873. We went immediate- 
ly to Portland, and after a few days in the home of Dr. Pitbaldo, 
then pastor at Congress Street M. E. Church, we went on to our An- 
nual Conference at Damariscotta, where I was reappointed to Pem- 
broke Iron Works. We set up our home in a part of the John Dean 
house, with upper chambers overlooking the little Pennamaguan 
river, on which I went with punt for pickerel or lilies." 

Mr. Lockhart remained at Pembroke Iron Works two years, and 
then went to Lubec, on the sea coast (which he says has always 
seemed his ''natural habitat"), where he "ranged the borders of 
the sea and its islands, from Eastport to Quoddy Light." He has 
since held pastorates at Jacksonville (East Machias), Pembroke, 
Orrington, to which he came in the spring of 1886, and where he 
lived for three years in "a little white parsonage, under the shelter 
of a large church with a tell-tale spire and a bell, that overlooked 
the river;" East Corinth, Cherryfield and Milbridge, Hampden, 
Pemaquid and New Harbor, East Boothbay, and Winterpprt, all in 
Maine. 

From "Men of Progress," a Boston publication of 1896, we learn 
that William Lawson Lockhart, son of David and Lucy (McNutt) 
Lockhart, a successful Boston business man, was b. in Horton, July 
20, 1829, and began business in East Cambridge, Mass., in 1856. In 
1857 he m, Lucy 0. Smith, of Kennebunk, Me. The business he 
founded is now carried on by his sons at Haymarket Square, Boston. 



THE LOCKWOOD FAMILY 

The Lockwood family of Cornwallis was founded by Moses, son 
of Gershom and Eunice (Close) Lockwood, of Greenwich, Conn., 
who came to Nova Scotia not until after the Revolutionary War. 
The date of his birth is not known to us, but it was perhaps about 
1752, He is said in the Lockwood Genealogy to have m. (1) Ham- 
nah Brush, of Stanwich, Conn., and to have had by her children : 



FAMILY SKETCHES 733 

Jessup,; and Lucy Ann, m. to Jonah Knapp. He m. (2) in Cornwal- 

lis, Jan. 24, 1786, Phebe, dan. of James and Grace Fox, and d. in 

Cornwallis, Dec. 8, 1807. 

Children by 2nd noiarriage. 

i Molly, b. April 22. 1787. 

ii Ann, b. Aug. 11, 1789. 

iii George, b. Feb. 26, 1792. 

iv Eunice, b. June 1, 1794. 

V Grace, b. Sept. 6, 1796, 

vi James, Aug. 8, 1798. 

vii John, b. Nov. 8, 1800. 

viii Edward, b. June 3, 1803, 



THE LONGFELLOW FAMILY 

Jonathan^ Longfellow (Nathan, William,) a first cousin once re- 
moved of the grandfather of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the 
poet, was born May 23, 1714, and Oct. 28, 1731, m. Mercy Clark, b. 
Oct. 28, 1731. In 1760 he removed from Nottingham, N. H,, to Corn- 
wallis, but in 1765 went to Machias, Me., where he spent the rest of 
his life, and died. Other Cornwallis men who went to Machias were, 
Jone Pineo, Archelaus Hammond, Jabez West, and Jonathan Wood- 
ruff. Before he left Cornwallis Mr. Longfellow sold his property to 
his son Nathan. Children : 

Stephen, b. July 19, 1733. 

i Mary, b. June 15, 1735. 

ii Jacob, b, Nov, 6, 1737, 

V Sarah, b. Nov. 17, 1739. 

V Elizabeth, b. July 17, 1741, m, to John Whidden. 

vi Nathan, b. Dec. 30, 1744, m. Margaret, dau. of Isaac and 
Abigail (Skinner) Bigelow, b. Aug. 2, 1747, and had 
children: Jacob, b. June 29, 1766; Daniel, b. Nov. 14, 
1768; Jonathan, b. Sept, 5, 1770; Isaac, b. Sept, 28, 
1772. In 1782, Nathan Longfellow also removed to 
Machias, Me., and his property in Cornwallis was sold 
to Thomas Ratchf ord. The Longfellow name thus early 
disappeared from the county. The Allison Genealogy 
has the following note: "Mrs. Whidden (Elizabeth 
Longfellow) and her sister, Maria Longfellow, lie 
buried at Horton, N. S., in the very centre of the 



734 KING'S COUNTY 

village of the historic Grand Pre. ' ' Unless Maria was 
Mary we have no record of her birth. 

vii Anna, b. Oct. 15, 1745. 

viii Hannah, b. Dec. 11 ,1747, m. June 19, 1766, to John English. 

ix Daniel, b. Dec. 16, 1749. 

X David, b. Dec. 16, 1751. 

xi Enoch, b. Aug. 14, 1753. 

xii Jonathan, b. April 28, 1756. 



THE LOOMER (LOOMIS) FAMILY 

The Loomer family of King's County was founded in part by 
Ephraim and Desiah Loomer from Lebanon, Conn. In New Eng- 
land the name was almost universally "Loomis," but in Nova 
Scotia it has always been Loomer. Ephaim Loomer of Cornwallis 
was almost certainly the 2nd son of Ephraim and Mary (Tuttle) 

Loomis, b. in Lebanon, May 21, 1727, m. (1) Hannah , and had 

a son Benajah, b. in Lebanon, Oct. 9, 1747. He must have m. (2) 
Desiah , who bore him children : 

i Asa, b. Dec. 1, 1752, in Lebanon, Conn. 

ii Mary, b. March 10, 1755, in Lebanon, Conn. 

iii Hannah, b. May 11, 1757, in Lebanon, Conn. 

iv Frederick, b. Sept. 25, 1762, prob. in Cornwallis. These are 
recorded on the Cornwallis Town Book. We find also in 
Cornwallis, Stephen and Hannah Loomer, who had 
children b. in Cornwallis: Mary, b. March 11, 1762; 
Stephen, b. Sept. 17, 1765. Simeon and Mary Loomer, 
who had children: James, b. Jan. 12, 1780; Elizabeth, 
b. Oct. 23, 1781; Henry b. Feb. 26, 1784(?). Levi 
and Lois Loomer, who had children: John, b. May 1, 
1784; Rebecca, b. Nov. 25, 1785; Esther, b. Oct. 31, 
1787 ; Phebe, b. Feb. 5, 1790. There are other records 
of this family on the Cornwallis Town Book, but it is 
impossible from them to make a coherent genealogy. 



THE LORD FAMILY 

Barnabas Tuthilli Lord, a member of the Connecticut Lord 
family, settled in Cornwallis and had several children born there. 
He was a son of Thomas, Jr., and Hester or Esther (Marvin) Lord, 
of Lyme, Conn., (m. Dec. 28, 1727), and was b. in Lyme, March 31, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 735 

1744. lie 111. Sept. 6, 1765, his cousin Martha, daii. of Capt. Samuel 

and Miriam (Marvin) Beekwith, b. Oct. 25, 1747, and d. March 14, 

1810. His will mentions 7 children. 

Children born in Cornwallis : 

i Marvin, b. Sept. 18, 1767. 
ii Mary, b. July 3, 1769. 
iii Elizabeth, b. June 11, 1771. 
iv Asa, b. Jan. 27, 1773. 
V Martha, b. May 16, 1775. 
See N. E. Hist, and Gen. Eegister Vol. 31. 



THE LOTHROP FAMILY 

Of the Connecticut Lothrop family four members in 1761 re- 
ceived grants in Horton, These vv^ere, Capt. Elisha and his sons, 
Elijah and Thaddeus; and Isaac Lothrop^ probbly son of Jabez. 
Whether all these grantees came to Horton or not we do not know, 
but for a time Elijah, son of Capt. Elisha, of Norwich, did live there. 

Elijah Lothrop, son of Captain Elisha and Hannah (Gurdon) 
Lothrop, b. in Norwich, Conn., Oct. 20, 1743, m. in Horton, April 10, 
1763, Elizabeth Elderkin, probably dau. of Joseph and Mary (Story) 
Elderkin, b. Oct. 30, 1740, d. in Lebanon, N. H., Feb. 17, 1812. He 
m. (2) March 4, 1813, Rhoda Gill, and d. Dec. 2, 1822. He was a 
grantee in Horton in 1761, but removed to New Hampshire. We do 
not know what children he had. 



THE LOVETT FAMILY 

A brief sketch of the Lovett family is given in the Calnek-Savary 
History of Annapolis, but its New England origin is not there 
stated. The History of Milford, Mass., says that Major Daniel 
Lovett, from Braintree, Mass., was an original proprietor of Men- 
don, Mass., and that he probably lived and died on what is knovni 
as "the Lovett Place, in the Davenport neighborhood." He m. in 
Boston (Judge Sewall officiating, certificate in 1721,) Abigail 
Thompson, of Braintree, and had children: Phineas; James; Han- 



736 KING'S COUNTY 

nah; Joanna; Abigail; Samuel; Daniel. Of these children, Phineas, 
the eldest, b. in Mendon, July 13, 1711, m. (1) Aug. 7, 1734, Han- 
nah Merriam, (2) late in 1742, Beulah, dau. of Edmund and Rachel 
(Sheffield) Morse, b. March 4, 1723. His eldest son was Phineas, 
Jr., bap. June 30, 1745, m. April 6, 1768, Abigail Thayer, and both 
father and son were well known in Annapolis county, N. S. For a 
sketch of Phineas Lovett, Sr., M. P. P. and a notice of his son 
Phineas, Jr., M. P. P., see the History of Annapolis. 

Phineas Lovett, Jr., M. P. P., who d. in 1828, and his wife Abigail 
(Thayer) had 11 children, of whom the sixth, James Russell Lovett, 
M. P. P., b. in 1781, m. in 1806, Sarah, dau. of William Allen and 
Ann (Osborn) Chipman, b. Aug. 10, 1788, and had 11 children. The 
9th of these, Eunice S., was m. Nov. 25, 1847, to George Thomson, of 
Halifax, later a resident of Wolfville, and Mayor of the town, and 
had five children. The 8th child of Phineas Lovett, Jr., M. P. P., 
was Thomas, who m. Ann, youngest dau. of William Allen and Ann 
(Osborn) Chipman, b. Dee. 16, 1795, and settled in King's County. 

Children of Thomas and Ann (Chipman) : 

i Margaret Ann, b. Nov. 21, 1815, m. to James Leavitt 

DeWolf, of Windsor, N. S. 
ii Sarah Jane, b. Feb. 2, 1823, d. unm. 
iii Mary Chipman, b. Dec. 14, 1825. 

iv Henry Edwin, b. March 28, 1834, m. Jan. 5, 1859, Annie M., 
dau. of Lewis Johnstone, M. D., and his wife, Mary 
Ann (Pryor), b. Sept, 11, 1836, and had 9 children, 3 
sons and 6 daus. 
V Agnes T., b. May 17, 1837, m. to James W. King, M. P. P. 
of Windsor, N. S., and had children. 
One of the most prominent men of King's County for the past 
quarter of a century has been Henry Edwin Lovett, son of Thomas 
and Ann (Chipman) Lovett. He has for years held public office in 
Kentville, his present office being Registrar of Probate for the 
county. 



THE LOWDEN FAMILY 

The Lowden family of King's County was founded by John^ Low- 
den who received his grant of one and a half shares of land in Corn- 



FAMILY SKETCHES 737 

wallis, Dee. 31, 176-4. He was undoubtedly a descendant of Richard 
Lowden, who settled in Charlestown, Mass., in 1638, and became the 
ancestor of the New England family of this name, but his par- 
entage we do not know. Children: 

i Jerusha, m. Jan. 18. 1781, to Abraham Knowlton. 

ii Thomas, b. probably in 1754, m. Rebecca Osborn. 

(How many more he may have had we do not know.) 

Thomas^ Lowden (Johni), b. probably in 1754, m. July 1, 1773, 
Rebecca, dau. of Samuel and Sarah Osborn, and d. Jan. 6, 1802, 
aged 47. Children: 

i Anna, b. March 15, 1774, m. by Rev. William Twining, Oct. 
28, 1790, to Joseph Churchill. 

ii Sarah, b. April 10, 1780. 

iii Lavinia, b. May 12, 1782, m. July 28, 1797, to Oliver Ham- 
ilton. See Hamilton Family. 

iv John Thomas, b. Aug. 5, 1785. 

V Samuel, b. Dec. 20, 1787, m. (1) Tabitha Loomer, (2) Mary 

Jane Wells. 

SamueP Lowden (Thomas^, Johni), b. Dee. 20, 1787, m. (1) Jan. 
2, 1812, Tabitha, dau. of Stephen and Catharine Loomer, who d. 
July 20, 1833, aged 40, (2) Mary Jane, dau. of John Wells, M. P. P., 
and his wife Prudence (Eaton), b. July 14, 1808. 

Children by 1st marriage : 

i Rebecca, b. Oct. 22, 1812, d. Nov. 11, 1837. 

ii John, b. Dec. 20, 1814. 

iii Stephen Chipman, b. Jan. 13, 1817. 

iv Thomas, b. June 27, 1819. 

V Joseph, b. Feb. 17, 1821, m. (1) in 1844, Olive, dau. of Capt. 

John and Abigail (Coffin) McKenzie, and had chil- 
dren : Rev. John McKenzie, D. D., a well-known clergy- 
man, now of Providence, R. I., who m. June 9, 1885, 
Agnes Lillian, only dau. of James Stanley and Janet 
(Nicholson) Eaton, of Cornwallis; Harriet Theresa; 
Rev. George Edgar, b. in 1854, d, in 1886, "a fine 
scholar and brilliant preacher"; William Andrew, d. 
in infancy; Elizabeth Cornelia; Rev. Harry Chap- 
man, b. in 1861. Joseph Lowden m. (2) Margaret 
Lyons, and has a son. Branch Leroy. 
vi David Wass, b. June 14, 1823, m. (1) Jerusha Ann) dau. 
of David and Jerusha (Rockwell) Eaton, b. Nov. 29, 



738 KING'S COUNTY 

1824, (2) !Rebecca Eaton, sister of his 1st wife, b. 

Oct. 16. 1835. 
vii Eunice Ann, b. July 3, 1825. 

viii Sarah, b. Oct. 4, 1827. Child by second marriage : 
ix Mary, m. in 1868, to George E. Wickwire, son of William 

and Lavinia (Eaton) Wickwire, b. in 1845, and had 

children: Jane; Bessie H. m. in 1896 to Avard B, 

Pineo. 

A Joseph^ Lowden, but whose son we do not know, m. Eebeeca, 
dan. of Lemuel and Esther (Pineo) Borden, b. Feb. 28, 1796. 



LYONS FAMILY 

The origin of the Lyons family of Cornwallis, which so far as we 
know bears no immediate relationship to the present Lyons family 
of Kentville, we have not been able to ascertain. 

David^ and Elizabeth Lyons of Cornwallis had the following 
children, the first four of whom were apparently not born in Corn- 
wallis. The others are recorded on the Town Book. Children : 

i John, m. March 23, 1808, Mary, dau. of Thomas and Sarah 

Rand, and had children : Wjilliam, Henry, b. May 

22, 1810, probably m. Harriet Reid; Sarah Jane, 

b. May 26, 1812 ; Drusilla b. June 26, 1814 ; Mary, b. 

April 18, 1817; Eunice, b. July 19, 1819; Hannah, b. 

January 21, 1822. 
ii Robert, m. Oct. 7, 1813, Elizabeth, dau. of Charles and 

Sarah Skinner, 
iii David, m. January 9, 1818, Alice, dau. of Daniel and Lydia 

Parker, 
iv Thomas Ratchford, b. March 3, 1780. 
V Elizabeth, b. May 2, 1782. 
vi Ruth, b. Jan. 16, 1784, m. Dec. 15, 1804, to Joseph, son of 

Joseph and Catharine (Rand) Newcomb. 
vii John, b. Dec. 13, 1785. 
viii Mary, b. Feb. 14, 1788, m. to Mayhew, son of Joseph and 

Catharine (Rand) Newcomb. 
ix Martha, m. in Dec, 1818, to Joseph, son of Handley and 

Catharine (Newcomb) Beckwith. 
X Nancy, m. April 8, 1819, to Daniel Webster Newcomb, son 

of Joseph and Catharine (Rand) Newcomb. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 739 

Thomas and Ann Lyons had children recorded in Cornwallis: 
Sarah, b. April IS, 1804; Isabella, b. Jan. 28, 1806, m. to Rev. Inga- 
ham Ebenezer Bill, D. D. ; David, b. Jan. 13, 1808 ; John, b. Jan. 18, 
1810 J Margaret, b. Dec. 6, 1813. 

A James Lyons m. in Cornwallis, April 10, 1806, Rosina Bigelow, 
widow. A Mary Lyons, dan. of James and Elizabeth Lyons, was m. 
probably in Cornwallis, Nov. 24, 1814, to James Corbet, son of John 
and Fanny (Sweet) Corbet. An Ann Lyons was m. Jan. 1, 1817, to 
Ralph Atkinson. 



THE MAGEE FAMILY 
Henry Magee was a grantee in Aylesf ord in 1786, and it is possibly 
he who is mentioned in this book as among the first settlers in Kent- 
ville. On the Horton Town Book is a record of the marriage, Dec. 
9, 1807, of Henry Magee and Ann, dan. of Colin and Jemima (New- 
comb) Brymer, and of the births of their children: Elizabeth, b. 
June 17, 1809; Margaret Ann, b. May 14, 1811, but the Henry 
Magee who is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery is there said to have 
died in 1806. John Magee of Aylesford m. Feb. 4, 1795, Anna 
Cloud, and had children: Margaret Kays, b. March 25, 1796; John 
Cloud, b. Nov. 14, 1797; Henry, b. March 21, 1800; Charlotte, b. 
May 29, 1802; Ann, b. Feb. 14, 1804; William, b. Oct. 30, 1806; 
Rebecca, b. June 1, 1809 ; Sophia, b. March 31, 1815. 



THE MANNING FAMILY 

Although the Manning family is properly a Falmouth, Hants 
County family there were intermarriages of so much importance 
between it and families of the present King's County, that a sketch 
of it is necessary here. The Manning family of Falmouth, a family 
of the highest respectability, was founded in Nova Scotia, by 
Peter Manning, an Irishman from County Monaghan, it is said a 
Roman Catholic, who came by way of Philadelphia to Halifax, and 
from there to Falmouth, probably about 1772, or later. Children : 



740 KING'S COUNTY 

i John, M. P. P., b. in 1763, in Ireland, m. Deborah Eaton, 

ii Rev. James, b. prob. in 1765, in Ireland, m. Francis Fams- 

worth. 
iii Rev. Edward, b. in 1767, in Ireland, m. Rebecca Skinner, 
iv Nancy, b. about 1769, in Ireland, m. to James Eaton. 

V Walter Carroll, b. perhaps about 1771, in Philadelphia, m. 

(1) Susanna Chm-ch, (2) Mrs, Sarah (Starr) 
Belcher, (3) Mrs. Lemuel Drew. At a much 
earlier time there were Irish Mannings in Hal- 
ifax, and it seems probable that they were nearly 
related to the founder of this family, but of the fact 
we cannot be sure. The wife of Peter Manning was 
probably Nancy, but we have no clear record of her. 
Peter Manning died probably in 1783. After com- 
ing to Falmouth, it is believed, the Manning family 
embriaced the Protestant faith. 

Johii2 Manning, M. P. P., (Peteri) b. in Ireland in 1763, m. May 

17, 1792, Deborah, dan. of David and Deborah (White) Eaton, of 

Cornwallis, b. Jan. 6, 1771. He was for some years a member of the 

Legislature for Hants (or for the town of Falmouth). He d. Nov. 

5, 1858, aged 98. His wife d. April 11, 1829. 

i Joseph Eaton, b. March 21, 1793, bap. by Rev. Robert 

Norris, January 19, 1794, d. March, 1840. He m. 
Elizabeth, dau. of Hugh and Roxalena (Cleveland) 
Pudsey, of Horton, a niece of Mrs. Cornelia Fox, and 
several children. 

ii Margaret, b. Nov. 15, 1796, d. unm. June 15, 1870. 

iii Benjamin, b. Nov. 13, 1797, d. j. p., Jan. 1825. 

iv Nancy, b. Jan. 9, 1799, d. unm. May, 1837. 

V Thomas, b. May 8, 1801, m. Charlotte , and d. in Feb., 

1888. His wife Charlotte d. in 1862, aged 58. 
vi Elizabeth, b. Aug. 5, 1803, d. unm., Aug. 19, 1886. 
vii Edward, b. April 8, 1806, d. unm., March 10, 1887. 
viii John, b. Sept. 4, 1810, d. March 9, 1872. He m. Mary, 

dau. of Jamies and Rachel (Cunnabell) Newcomb, b. 

Feb. 8, 1808. After John Manning's death, his widow 

was m. to Daniel Moore, M. P. P., of Kentville. She 

died in 1896. 
ix Walter b. March 4, 1812, d. May, 1852. 
X Sarah Jane, b. 18, 1815, m. Dec. 29, 1840, to Edward, 

son of James Eaton, b. Nov. 6, 1804. 

Rev. James^ Manning (Peter^), b. in Ireland, prob. twin with 
John (b. in 1763), m. in 1796, Frances, dau. of Solomon and Lucy 



FAMILY SKETCHES 741 

(Farnswortli) Farnsworth, of Annapolis county, b. Oct, 11, 1774. 
Like his brother. Rev. Edward Manning, Rev. James was at first 
a Congregationalist, but being immersed in Cornwallis, by the 
Rev. Thomas Handley Chipman, he was ordained pastor of the 
Baptist church at Lower Granville. He d. May, 1818. Among his 
descendants are several persons of note, such as the Hon. Mr. 
Justice Longley, of Halifax, whose mother was Frances (Manning) 
wife of Israel Longley, and after Mr. Longley 's death, wife of 
Levi Woodworth, of Canning, King's County. Children: 

i James Edward, b. in 1804, m. Catharine Boyd, of Falmouth, 

Hants County. 

ii Benjamin W. C, b. about 1808, m. Waity Newcomb, and 
had a son, Rev. James William Manning, b. in 1841. 

iii Lucy Ann, m. to William Henry Troop, J. P., and had a 
dau. Charlotte Augusta, b. in 1830, m. to Avard 
Longley, M. P. P., M. P. William Henry Troop, J. P., 
was a brother of Alex Howe Troop, who m. in 1817, 
Eunice Chipman, and had a son, Wm. Henry Troop, 
who m. Georgiana, dau. of Rev. Archdeacon Coster, 
of Fredericton, N. B., and John George Troop, b. in 
1826, who m. in Halifax, July 10, 1855, Margaret 
Elizabeth, dau. of John and Mary Anne (Duffus) 
Morrow, b. March 2, 1834. 

iv Frances, m. (1) to Israel Longley, who d. in 1871, (2) to 
Levi Woodworth. 

Rev. Edward^ Manning (Peteri), b. in Ireland, in 1767, m. June 
25, 1801, Rebecca, dau. of Charles and Sarah (Osborn) Skinner. 
He was at first a Congregationlist, but in 1807 withdrew from that 
body and formed the First Baptist Church in Cornwallis. He d. 
Jan. 12, 1851. Children. 

i Nancy, b. May 12, 1802, m. Jan. 28, 1819, to Hezekiah John, 

son of William and Eunice (Beckwith) Cogswell, 
b. July 9, 1797. She d. March 16, 1820, it is believed, 
leaving no child. 

ii Eunice, b. Aug. 23, 1803, d. March 2, 1818. 

iii Mary, b. Aug. 12, 1805, m., Dec. 18, 1834, to Peter Car- 
ruthers, b. in Dumfries, Scotland, and had children: 
Rebecca Jane, m. to Joshua Chase; Mary Theresa; 
Walter Manning. 



742 KING'S COUNTY 

Walter Carroll^ Manning (Peteri), b. perhaps about 1771, in 
Philadelphia, m. (1) in Falmouth, Susanna, dau. of William and 
Susanna Church (formerly of Little Compton, R. I.,) b. Sept. 28, 
1774. He m. (2), April 17, 1805, Mrs. Sarah (Starr) Belcher, dau. 
of David and Susanna (Potter) Starr, of Cornwallis, and widow 
of Benjamin Belcher, who d. May 14, 1802. He m. (3) Mrs. Lemuel 
Drew, of Petite Riviere, and in this place died and was buried. 
Children by first marriage: 

i Frances Theresa, b. Jan. 26, 1798, m. in St. Paul's Church, 
Halifax, April 16, 1790, to John Ferguson, who be- 
came one of the seceders from St. Paul's Church to the 
Baptist faith, and was for many years editor of the 
Christian Messenger. He d. Feb. 10, 1855, his wife d. 
March 16, 1886, at the home of her only daughter, 
Mrs. Rufus Smith Black, in Halifax. The only child 
of John and Frances Theresa (Manning) Ferguson, 
was Mary Theresa, b. Aug. 24, 1815, m. Feb. 5, 1839, 
to Rufus Smith Black, M. D., and d. in California, 
Dec. 29, 1901. The children of Dr. Rufus Smith and 
Mary Theresa Black were : Fanny Theresa ; Jane 
Miller ; Louisa Pinckney ; Rufus Smith ; Mary Eliza- 
beth; John Ferguson, M. D., of Halifax; Laura 
Matilda; Edith S. Ferguson. 

ii Susan Maria, m. in 1840, to William Roche, b. in Shel- 
bume, of a New York Loyalist family, and lived in 
Halifax. Their children were : Charles Roche ; Wil- 
liam Roche, M. P., of Halifax; EHzabeth Roche; 
Anne Roche. 

iii Anne Catharine, b. prob. in May, 1794, bap. in St. John's 
parish, Cornwallis, Aug. 24, 1794, aged 3 mos. She 
was m. by license, in St. Paul's parish, Halifax, Oct. 
14, 1813, to George Eaton (Elisha, David), b. April 
6, 1790, who is mentioned in the Eaton Family Sketch. 

iv Desiah, b. Jan. 21, 1808, m. to Capt. Henry Marshall, brother 
of Admiral Marshall, and of another who was Naval 
Storekeeper at Halifax. They had 4 children, 2 sons 
and 2 daughters. 

V Sarah Eliza, b. Sept. 10, 1809, d. unm., Nov. 8, 1846. She 
lived in Cornwallis, with her uncle, Rev. Edward 
Manning. 

vi Walter Carroll, Jr., b. Sept. 12, 1811, for some time editor 
of the Halifax Chronicle. He m. and had children. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 743 

THE MARCHANT FAMILY 

Of the immediate ancestry of the Cornwallis Marehant family 
we have no certain knowledge, but it is probably to be found in 
Martha's Vineyard. On the Cornwallis Town Book are the follow- 
ing Marehant records: 

William Marehant, m. Nov. 13, 1788, Elizabeth Williamson. 
Children : 

Henry, b. July 13, 1790, m. Dec. 2, 1812, Abigail, dau. of Charles 
and Sarah Skinner. Children: Harriet, b. Sept. 15, 1813; Rebecca,, 
Ann, b. June 1, 1815 ; Sarah, b. April 9, 1817 ; Lavinia, b. March 
6, 1819 ; Henry S., b. May 30, 1821. 

William, Jr., b. June 17, 1792, m. (1) Dec. 31, 1817, Abigail, 
dau. of John and Esther Burbidge, who d. Jan. 25, 1833. He 
m. (2) Feb. 6, 1834, Eunice, dau. of David and Eunice Chase. 
Children (by both marriages): John Burbidge, b. Oct. 5, 1818; 
William, b. Feb. 20, 1821; Elizabeth, b. May 31, 1823; Esther, b. 
June 20, 1825; Mary Jane, b. April 28, 1828; James Henry, b. 
Aug. 6, 1830; Edward, b. Nov., 1832, d. May 1, 1833; Abigail, b. 
Dec. 7, 1834; Eunice Amelia, b. Nov. 12, 1836, d. Dec. 1, 1838; 
Joseph Melbourne, b. April 14, 1840; Eunice Catherine, b. Feb. 21, 
1842 ; Harriet Amelia, b. Sept. 18, 1844. 



THE MARGESON FAMILY 

The Margeson family was founded in Annapolis county by 

Gideon Margeson "a worthy Loyalist of 1783." See History of 

Annapolis. His grandson, Christopher, son of Thomas and Phebe 

(Daniels), was b. in Annapolis county, Sept. 23, 1814, and m. in 

Annapolis, Dec. 24, 1840, Margaret L. Reagh, of Margaretsville, 

Wilmot, b. June 4. 1822. He removed to Berwick in 1858, and died 

there Sept. 4, 1906. Children: 

i Thomas Avelin, b. Oct. 20, 1841, d. Aug. 22, 1907. 

ii Caroline Adelia, b. June 23, 1843. 

iii John Wesley, b. Jan. 18, 1845. 

iv Lemuel Reese, b. March 24, 1847. 

V Sarah Lavinia, b. June 17, 1849. 



744 KING'S COUNTY 

vi Albertus Livingston, b. April 26, 1855. 

vii Mary Elizabeth, b. April 8, 1857. 

viii Ada Celestia, b. Oct. 15, 1859, d. Dec. 15, 1904. 

ix Charles Had en Spurgeon, b. June 1, 1862. 

X Ella Louisa, b. Sept. 13, 1867. 

Lemuel Reece Margeson, son of Christopher and Margaret L. 
(Reagh), Margeson, was b. March 24, 1847, and m. Sept. 22, 1868, 
Elizabeth Lucinda Williams. They had children: Sarah Naomi, b. 
Nov. 16, 1870, d. May 15, 1892; Ruth Ann; Emma Jane; Judson 
Stanley, b. Dec. 26, 1877; Ernest Williams, b. Nov. 17, 1879; 
Margaret Louisa, b. Dec. 21, 1881, d. April 7, 1886; Susie Maud; 
Leonora Evangeline. Much of the above information has been 
kindly furnished by Mr. Lemuel Reese Margeson of Berwick. Of 
the origin of the family in America the author has not been able 
to find any trace. 



THE MARTIN FAMILY 

A grantee of Horton in 1761 was Brotherton Martin, probably 
of a Rhode Island family, whose wife was Elizabeth (''Betty"). 
They had a son Perez, who m. (2) Dec. 1, 1763, Sarah Caldwell; 
a son Lemuel, who m. April 20, 1773, Nancy Anderson; a son 
Peter, a Freewill Baptist minister, it is said, who m. March 2, 1778, 
Jerush,a dau. of Jehiel and Phebe (Cobb) DeWolf ; and a dau. 
Elizabeth, b. in 1754, m. to Jehiel DeWolf. The children of 
Lemuel and Nancy (Anderson) Martin were: Elizabeth, b. June 
28, 1776; John, b. Aug. 4, 1778; Nancy, b. Dec. 18, 1870, and 
probably others. Rev. Peter and Jerusha (DeWolf) Martin had 
children : Nancy, b. Feb. 4, 1779 ; Sarah, b. May 27, 1781, m. to 
Jonathan Davison; Bartlett, b. July 28, 1783; Jerusha, b. Nov. 
24, 1785 ; Sophia, b. , m. to Lingley of St. John, N. B. 



THE MASTERS (MARSTERS) FAMILY 

Abrahami, 2nd, Capt. Jonathan^, and Moses^ Masters, sons of 

Abraham and Deborah (Knowlton) Masters, of Manchester, Mass., 



FAMILY SKETCHES 745 

came from Manchester, it is said, in their own vessel, to Falmouth, 
Hants county, in 1760. Nov. 15, 1760, in Falmouth they received 
their grants of land. Abraham^ 2d, bap. Nov. 6, 1726, m. April 14, 
1754, Sarah, dau. of Robert Knowlton, and had children: Mary, 
b. April 14, 1754; Abraham, 3rd, b. Dec. 26, 1755; Ezekiel, bap. 
March 10, 1758; John, bap. Jan. 20, 1760. Capt. Jonathan^, bap. 
July 28, 1734, m. Feb. 17, 1757, Mary, dau, of Robert Knowlton, 
and had children: Nathaniel, b. June 6, 1758; Deborah; Jonathan, 
b. in 1761; Mary, b. May 2, 1763; Olivia; Rachel; Lydia; Sarah 
Ann; Lavinia; Susan; Ann; Catherine. Capt. Jonathan d, in 
Falmouth, Oct. 20, 1820. His wife d. Oct. 21, 1820. Moses^, bap. 

Dec. 25, 1737, m. Knowlton, sister of his brothers' wives, and 

came to Falmouth, but soon returned to N. E. Of the brothers who 
settled permanently in Falmouth, descendants in the male line of 
only Abraham remain. From Capt. Jonathan there are, however, 
prominent families like the Dimock, Payzant, Locke, and King 
(of Onslow) families in other names. The Masters family of the 
present King's County is descended from Abraham, 3rd. 

Abrahajn^ 3rd, Masters (Abraham^, 2nd), was b. Dec. 26, 1755, 
and m. in Cornwallis, March 2, 1778, Elizabeth Seaborn Wolfe 
Woodworth, dau. of Silas and Sarah (English) Woodworth, who 
was born on the ship Wolfe, on the passage from New London to 
Nova Scotia, May 21, 1760. Abraham, 3rd., d. in Cornwallis, May 
28, 1846, and is buried in Billtown. His wife d. Aug. 9, 1851. 
Children : 

i Silas Woodworth, b. Feb. 12, 1779, m. Rebecca Rand. 

ii Enoch Steadman, b. Jan. 26, 1781, started for England in 
1802, and was probably never heard from. 

iii John, b. Dec. 30, 1782, m. June 2, 1812, Sarah West, dau. 
of John and Jane (West) North, and d. Jan. 10, 1879. 
His wife d. Jan. 29, 1850, aged 60. They had chil- 
dren: Abraham; Isaac; Douglas; Angelina; James. 
'Among the members of this family who have attained 
distinction, is Professor Vernon Masters, Ph. D., son of 
James (John, Abraham), who graduated at Acadia 
and Cornell Universities, and studied at Harvard and 
in Germany. Professor Masters is Expert Geologist 
for the Peruvian Government, at Lima, Peru. His 



746 KING'S COUNTY 

brother John, also a graduate of Acadia and Cornell 
Universities, is a mining engineer. 

iv Sarah Knowlton, b. Oct. 6, 1785, m. as his second wife to 
Wilmot Osborn. 

V Hannah Dimock, b. April 25, 1788, m. to Samuel C. Wood- 
worth. 

vi James M., b. June 29, 1790, m. April 13, 1813, Nancy, dau. 
of Joseph and EHzabeth Sibley. Children: Arthur, d. 
young; Letitia, m. to J. Newcomb, of Parrsborough ; 
Charlotte, m. to John Freeman Masters (Silas Wood- 
worth, Abraham 3rd, Abraham 2nd; Arthur W., m. 
Cutten, and had sons: Arthur W., for many years 
in the insurance business in the U. S. ; Charles, Bar- 
rister, K. C, in Ottawa. See the Enghsh "Who's Who." 

vii Lois, b. Oct. 4, 1791, d. about 1840. 

viii Rev. Ezekiel, b. Oct. 19, 1794, m. (1) in 1818, Fanny, dau. 
of John and Elizabeth (Durkee) Hayes. He re- 
moved to Boston about 1850. His wife d. Dec. 1858, 
aged 57. He then returned to N. S. and m. Har- 
riet, dau. of John Condon, He d. in April, 1883. He 
had 9 children. See Chute Genealogies, under Wood- 
worth, 

ix Orinda, b, Aug. 12, 1796, m. to Simeon Porter. 

X Ann, b. May 29, 1797. m. Oct, 15, 1815, to Isaac W. New- 
comb, and had 8 children. 

xi William Bowles, b. May 24, 1801, m. (1) Sarah Newcomb. 
and her 3 children, (2) Elizabeth Bowles, and had 3 
children, one of whom is Richard A. Masters, of Kent- 
ville, who m. Anna E., dau. of Charles Andrew 
(Silas Woodworth) Masters. 

xii Sherman, b. Sept. 5, d. Sept. 19, 1806. 

xiii Shubael Baker, b. Sept. 17, 1806, m. Pamelia Bowles. 

xiv Valorious Alban, b. June 25, d, July 14, 1810, 

Silas Woodworth^ Masters (Abraham^, 3rd, Abraham^) b. Feb. 
1779, m,, Nov. 25, 1805, Rebecca, dau. of Mayhew and Elizabeth 
(Beckwith) Rand, b. Jan. 6, 1787. Children: 

i Horatio Nelson, b. Dec. 31, 1807, m. Marianna Boehner, and 

had 6 children. His son Hibbert Boehner, b. in 1839, 

was a commission merchant in Brooklyn, N. Y., and 

served with distinction in the American Civil War, 

ii EHza A„ b. Jan. 12, 1809, m. to Timothy Bamaby, b. Jan. 

14, 1781, and had 7 children, 
iii Lydia Ellen, b. March 4, 1811, m. to Elijah Phinney. 
iv George Edward, b. Jan. 17, 1814, m. Louisa Sharpe, of St. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 747 

John, N. B., and had 2 children; Robert Silas, un- 
married ; Louisa, who was m. as his first wife to 
George BlancJiard, Jr. 

V Holmes Chipman, M. D., b. Oct. 12, 1815, m. Emeline Morse, 
and d. Aug. 19, 1891. He had 11 children. 

vi John Freeman, b. Jan. 2, 1818, m. his cousin Charlotte, dau. 
of James M. Masters, and had 4 children. He was a 
commission merchant, of high influence standing in 
St. John, N. B. 

vii Mary JuHa, b. June 1, 1821, m. to E. Tupper, M. D., and 
had 6 children. 

viii Charles Andrew, b. May 4, 1823, m. Charlotte G. Morse, 
Children : Albert ; Frederick A., Barrister at Kent- 
ville ; Anna E., m. and Richard A. Masters ; Emma, m. 
to Henry Thomas, of Chelsea, Mass. ; Catherine, m. to 
John Publicover ; Caleb Rand ; Rose Winniett ; John 
Freeman; Nellie Louise, m. to Percy Bentley. Of 
this family John Freeman Masters has been for many 
years manager of the D. A. R. Steamship Company in 
Boston, and is one of the most widely known Canadians 
in the United States. For some years he has been 
President of the Canadian Club in Boston, and Presi- 
dent of the British Charitable Society in that city. He 
is the acknowledged Genealogist of the Nova Scotia 
Masters family. 

ix Rebecca A., b. March 21, 1825, m. to James Calkin, and 
had among other children, George E. Calkin, of Kent- 
ville, merchant, and many years Postmaster there. 

X Eunice Cecilia, b. March 21, 1825, m. to Albert Barnaby. 

xi Richard Upham, b. Jan. 2, 1828. 



THE MATHER FAMILY 
James Mather m. in Philadelphia, Pa., Feb. 4, 1755, Elizabeth 
Campbell. Children, recorded in Cornwallis: Alexander, b. Oct. 
17, 1756; Jean, b. March 15, 1762; John Burbidge, b. Feb. 28, 
1766; Elizabeth, b. Feb. 15, 1769. 



THE McKITTRIOK FAMILY 

William^ McKittrick, born in Kirkudbright, Scotland, in 1793, 



748 KING'S COUNTY 

came to America in 1817. He landed at St. John, N. B., in March 
of that year, but must have removed very soon to King's County. 
In Lower Horton he m., Sept. 26, 1818, Agnes Kirkpatrick, a native 
of Dumfries, who had followed him to America as his affianced 
wife. This couple had children born in Horton: John, b, July 17, 
1819; William, b. Oct. 10, 1820, d. in 1835; Mary Ann, b. Feb. 
11, 1822; James, b. Dec, 11, 1823. Of these children, John m. Jan. 
15, 1851, Abigail, dau. of John and Maria (Gilmore) Newcomb, b. 
May 24, 1825, and had 10 children ; James, m. Sept. 26, 1855, Sabra 
Elizabeth Lewis Newcomb, sister of Abigail, b. April 25, 1831, and 
had 4 children. Mary Ann was not married. William McKittrick 
d. Oct. 30, 1886, his wife Agnes, d. Sept. 9, 1876. [In 1907, three 
of the children of William and Agnes were still living, aged re- 
spectively, 90, 87, and 85 years]. 

The children of John^ and Abigail (Newcomb) McKittrick were : 
William; Agnes Euphemia; John Newcomb; Charles Hamilton; 
Anna Maria, 1st ; Mary Elizabeth ; Anna Maria, 2nd ; James Byron ; 
Sarah Naomi ; Abigail. 

The children of James^ and Sabra Elizabeth Lewis (Newcomb) 
were: Burgess; Nina; Emma Isabella Burdett; Frederick James 
Alexander. Of these, Burgess graduated, B. A., at Dalhousie 
University, Halifax, in 1877, obtaining there the Governor General's 
medal for general proficiency. He has been principal of Lunenburg 
Academy from 1890 to the present time. Frederick James Alexander 
graduated B. Sc. at Dalhousie in 1894, with honors in Pure and 
Applied Mathematics, receiving the nomination to the "1851 Ex- 
hibition Science Research Scholarship," worth £750 Stg. for 2 years. 
He elected to attend Cornell University and went there in 1894, 
remaining two years in Research Work, chiefly electricity. In 
1896 he entered the employ of the General Electric Co. of New 
York, at Lynn, Mass. At the end of one year he was transferred 
to the head office of the company at Schenectady, later being re- 
moved to the office of the vice-president at New York. In 1905 
he received the appointment of Managing Director of the General 
Electric Company in Australia. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 749 

THE MILLER FAMILY 

William Miller was au early grantee in Aylesford. He married 

Julia , and had children: William, b. March 26, 1801; Nathan, 

b. Dec. 10, 1802; Mary, b. Oct. 8, 1804; James, b. July 1, 1806; 
Elizabeth, b. Nov. 5, 1807. A John Miller of Aylesford married 
Hannah CuUins, and had children: Thomas, b. May 11, 1817; 
Sophia, b. May 18, 1819; Charlotte, b. Nov. 3, 1821; Rebecca, b. 
June 21, 1823. 

THE MINER OR MINOR FAMILY 

The Miner family of King's County, founded by Sylvanus Miner, 
the Horton grantee, has been traced by Dr. Brechin to John Miner, 
Sr., who settled at Stratford, Conn., in 1657 or '58. Sylvanus Miner 
was a son of Thomas and Hannah Miner, and was bap. in Stoning- 
ton, March 5, 1711, and admitted a member of the church there, 

May 5, 1734. He m. , and d. in Horton, March 15, 1786, aged 

77. The Miner family traces clearly to Sir Henry Miner, who was 
Knighted by Edward the Third about 1346, and is one of the com- 
paratively few American families that can prove its right to bear 
arms. Children : 

i Thomas, bap. June 29, 1740, m. Sarah Witter. 

ii Sylvanus, Jr., bap, Oct. 10, 1742, m. March 15, 1769, Lucy 
Brownell. He d. May 9, 1794. Children, Anna, b. 
Feb. 4, 1770; Lucy, b. Nov. 6, 1776; Cynthia, b. Jan. 
7, 1782; Anna, b. Dec. 13, 1784; Sylvanus, 3rd, b. 
Jan. 30, 1787. (For one member of this family, see 
Trueman's "The Chignecto Isthmus," p. 245). 

iii Hannah, bap. Feb. 17, 1744-5, m. Dec. 26, 1763, to Benja- 
min Peck, Jr. See Peck Family. 

iv James, bap. Nov. 12, 1749, m. Sept. 26, 1771, Elizabeth, 
dau. of John and Bathsheba (Whipples) Turner, b. 
June 15, 1753. Children: Elizabeth, b. Dec. 14, 1772, 
m. Sept. 28, 1795, to Samuel, son of Nathaniel 
Brown; Hannah, b. Jan. 16, 1778; Mary, b. Jan. 4, 
1784, m. Feb. 17, 1814, to Jonathan Borden; Rebecca, 
b. July 20, 1785, m. Oct. 23, 1807, to James Wood- 
man; Abigail, b. April 23, 1788, m. Oct. 26, 1814, to 
James, son of Obadiah Wickwire; Susanna Dunham, 
b. Sept. 18, 1790, m. in May, 1812, to William Tur- 
ner. 



750 KING'S COUNTY 

Thomas^ Miner, (Sylvanusi), bap. at Stonington, Conn., June 29, 
1740, m. in Horton, Oct. 16, 1764, Sarah, dan. of Samuel Witter, b. 
in 1747. He d. in June, 1801. Children : 

i Sarah, b. July 31, 1766, m. May 25, 1791, as his 2nd wife, 
to Charles DeWolf (son of Simeon), whose 1st wife 
was Sabra Harding, dau. of Israel Harding. To 
Charles DeWolf, Sarah bore 10 children, one of 
whom was Lucy Ann, m. to Henry Knowles Eaton, 
and one Kebecca Maria, m, as his 2nd wife to Charles 
Eaton. 

ii Ann, b. Feb. 11, 1768, m. Sept. 17, 1789, as his 1st wife, 
to Moses Stevens, to whom she bore 10 children. 

iii Amy, b. Sept. 7, 1770, m. Dec. 18, 1794, to John Porter, of 
Cornwallis. 

iv Thomas Griffin, b. May 20, 1773, m. Aug. 28, 1798, Lavinia, 
dau. of Samuel Hamilton, and had 11 children. 

V Samuel, b. Dec. 17, 1775, lost at sea. 

vi Eunice, b. Aug. 11, 1778, m. Dee. 17, 1798, to Luther, son 
of Simeon and Sarah Porter. 

vii Jerusha, b. March 8, 1781, m. to Aaron, son of Benjamin 
and Mary (Elderkin) Cleveland, and had 6 children. 

viii Prudence, b. June 24, 1783, m. to William Cleveland. 

ix Elijah Daniel, b. June 16, 1786, m. Bishop,. 

X Benjamin, b. July 20, 1789, d. unm., aged 50, 

xi Jacob, b. May 13, 1792, lost at sea. 



THE MOORE FAMILY 

The Moore family of King's County is descended from Hon. John 
Moore, Barrister, b. in England in 1658, but afterward of "Moore 
Hall," Charleston, S. C, and ''Moore Hall," Chester county, Penn- 
sylvania, and his wife, Rebecca Axtell, through their third son. 
Col. William, who m. in 1722, Williamina Wemyss, who with her 
two brothers, David and James, under the care of her uncle, Hon. 
Wm. Loch, M. D., came to Maryland after the death of her father 
at the battle of Preston, in 1715. Col. Wm. Moore was active in 
the Revolution, in the Province of Pennsylvania, on the Tory side, 
but he died in 1783. He had twelve children, the seventh of whom 
was Capt. Thomas William, who early in life established himself 
in New York, and July 15, 1761, married Anne (Langdon) Ascough, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 751 

daughter of a New York merchant and widow of Dr. Richard 
Aseough, a surgeon in the British army, resident in New York, In 
May, 1762, Mr. Moore was in business in King Street, New York, 
on his own account. In 1776 he entered the King's service and 
was made a Captain in the Second Battalion (commanded by Col. 
George Brewerton) of General Oliver DeLancey's Brigade. After 
the taking of Savannah in 1779, at which he was present. Captain 
Moore was appointed Barrack Master at Savannah. In 1781 the 
British evacuated Savannah, and soon after Captain Moore went 
to Nova Scotia and settled in Parrsborough. There "he became 
one of the owners of what is known as the Partridge Island Grant," 
a tract of land which had originally been given to John Avery, 
John Lockhart, and Jacob Bacon, but had been sold by them to 
others. From the later owners it was bought conjointly by Captain 
Moore, Captain James Eatchford, and Silas Crane. On his part of 
this property Captain Moore, importing timber for the 
purpose, erected a large house, which he named "White- 
hall." Precisely how many years he lived in Parrs- 
borough we do not know, but he finally got tired of 
his exile and returned to New York. From there he went to England 
and from the British Government received the appointment of 
British Consul for Rhode Island and Connecticut. In this capacity 
he came back to New England, where, with the exception of voy- 
ages across the Atlantic, he remained for some years. He died, 
however, in England, in 1799; his death is noticed in the Gentle- 
man's Magazine of June 27, 1799, and he is called "Captain Thomas 
William Moore, late His Majesty's Consul to Rhode Island." After 
his death his widow lived in Brooklyn, N. Y., and there she died. 
Capt. Moore's estate was administered on by his son, Thomas 
William Moore. 

Capt. Thomas William^ Moore and his wife Anne (Langdon) 
Aseough had the following children : 

i Rachel Lane, m. in Cornwallis, March 31, 1788, to William 
Campbell, b. in Scotland, Judge of the Inferior Court 
of N. S., and Judge of Probate for King's County, 



752 KING'S COUNTY 

and had sons: William; Thomas; Wilhelmina, m. 

to Hon. James Delap Harris, M. L. C. ; and per- 
haps others. 
ii Col. William Charles, m. by license, in St. John's Parish, 

Cornwallis, April 17, 1791, Elizabeth Harrington, (2) 

a Mrs. Olmstead. 
iii Thomas William, Jr., m. (1) Mary, dau. of George Cibbs, 

(2) Alida Mary Bibby, and lived in New York, 
iv Janet Forman, m. to Lieut., afterward Comomdore, Jacob 

Jones, Jr., U. S. N., b. in 1770, d. in 1850. 

V Wilhelmina, m. June 28, 1812, to Gideon S. Harrington, of 

Cornwallis. 
vi Grace, d. in infancy. 
(Only three of these children lived in Nova Scotia.) 
Col. William Charles^ Moore, (Capt. Thomas Williami) m. Eliza- 
beth, dau. of Stephen and Elizabeth Harrington, formerly of North 
Kingston, R. I. Children: 

i Harriet Theresa, bap. Feb. 20, 1792, d. unm. 

ii William Charles, bap. July 1, 1795, in St. John's Parish, 
Cornwallis, at 9 months old, was attached to the 
British Legation at Washington. He left a son Wil- 
liam Charles, who also lived in Washington. 

iii Richard, M. A., b. in 1798, m. probably in 1828, Olivia, dau. 
of John and Sarah (Hale) Ward, b. Sept. 26, 1812. 
They had children : Eliza Jane, b. June 29, 1829 ; 
Sarah Ann, b. Aug. 31, 1831; John Ward, b. July 8, 
1833 ; Lavinia Angus, b. July 7, 1835 ; Emeline Loch- 
man, b. April 2, 1837; William Charles, b. April 10, 
1839 ; Rebecca Louisa, b. June 15, 1841 ; Julia Ethel, 
b. June 30,1843; Richard Albert, b. June 13, 1845; 
Thomas Edward, b. April 23, 1847 ; Mary Alice, b. May 
19, 1849; John Gordon, b. March 15, 1851; aara 
Hale, b. June 11, 1853 ; Alma Olivia, b. July 28, 1855. 

iv Wilhelmina, b. in 1798, m. Sept. 11, 1826, to Wm. Bennett 
Webster, M. D., of Kentville. 

V Daniel Charles, b. in 1800, m. twice, and had a family, the 

eldest of whom living is John Daniel Moore, the 
youngest, Willis B. Moore, M. D.. of Kentville, one of 
the leading physicians in Nova Scotia. 
vi Stephen Harrington, Q. C, barrister, who m. (1) Lavinia, 
dau. of Dennis and Olivia (Denison) Angus, and by 
her had 3 children, (2) Oct. 20, 1846, Hannah Mc- 
Intyre, dau. of James Ratchford and Elizabeth (Free- 
man) DeWolf, of Liverpool, N. S., and by her had 3 
children. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 758 

THE MORTON FAMILY 
Elkanah^ Morton (Elkanah, Ephraim, George, Ephraim, George), 

b. in 1781, probably in Dartmouth, Mass., m. Rebecca , and was 

a grantee in Cornwallis. Children : 

i Roland, m. (1) Alice Newcomb, (2) Hannah Gore. 

ii Lemuel, b. 1753 or '54, m. Martha Newcomb. 

iii Sarah, m. June 23, 1774, to Pern, son of Cap.t. John and 

Rachel Terry, 
iv Mary, m. Dec. 20, 1774, to Asa, son of Samuel Beckwith. 

V Elkanah, Jr., b. July 26, 1761, in Cornwallis. See Personal 

Sketches. 
vi George, b. June 7, 1763. 
vii Rebecca, b. Oct. 23, 1765. 
viii Samuel, b. Sept. 7, 1767, d. April 21, 1811, and is buried 

at Chipman's Corner. 

Roland2 Morton (Elkanahi), m. (1) June 30, 1785, Alice, dau. 
of John and Mercy (Barnaby) Newcomb, b. Jan. 21, 1763, d. March 
12, 1791, (2) July 21, 1802, Hannah, dau. of Moses, Jr., and Mary 
(Newcomb) Gore. Children by first marriage: 

i Rebecca, b. Nov. 6, 1786, m. Nov. 23, 1815, as his 2nd wife, 

to Obadiah Newcomb. 
ii Elkanah, b. Dec. 30, 1788, m. Nov. 19, 1812, Pamelia 

Sophia Freeman, of Amherst, N. S. 

Children by 2nd marriage. 

iii Mary Alice, b. May 2, 1803. 
iv Sarah Ann, b. March 9, 1805. 

V George, b. March 14, 1807. 
vi Sophia, b. April 3, 1809. 

vii Margaret Desiah, b. June 12, 1813. 

viii Roland Tupper, b. April 13, 1818. 

ix Elizabeth Jane Starr, b. March 19, 1821. 

Major LemueP Morton, M. P. P. (Elkanah^), b. 1753 or '54, m. 
June 7, 1780, Martha, dau, of John and Mercy (Barnaby) New- 
comb, b. Oct. 12, 1760 (the first child b. in Cornwallis after the 
arrival of the Conn, planters). He d. April 30, 1810, and was 
buried with military honors. He was a J. P., and Major of the 
6th Battalion of Militia, and represented the town of Cornwallis 
from 1806 to 1812. His wife d. Feb. 11, 1838. Children: 



754 KING'S COUNTY 

i Jolin, M. L. C, b. March 26, 1781, m. April 28, 1810, Ann, 

dau. of Mason and Lydia Cogswell. 
ii "William, b. May 21 or 31, 1782, d. Aug. 4, 1848. 
iii James, b. Oct. 19, 1783, d. May 29, 1811. 
iv George B., b. Aug. 27, 1786, d. July 27, 1809. 

V Holmes, b. March 6, 1788, m. Christina, dau. of Isaac 

"Webster. 
vi Charles, b. Dec. 3, 1789, m. Nov. 6, 1816, Mary, dau. of 

William Woodworth, b. May 3, 1798. He d. in Feb., 

1858. 
vii Guy, b. Oct. 30, 1791. 
viii Eebecca, b. Aug. 28, 1793, m. to William, son of John and 

Esther Burbidge, b. Oct. 1, 1792. 
ix Mary Alice, b. Nov. 12, 1799, d. July 2, 1851. 

Elkanah^, 3rd, Morton (Eoland2, Elkanahi), b. Dec. 30, 1788, m. 

Nov. 19, 1812, Pamelia Sophia Freeman, of Amherst, N. S. Children : 

i Eebecca Desiah, b. Nov. 29, 1813. 

ii William Freeman, b. Jan. 27, 1816. 

iii Hannah Alice, b. July 28, 1817. 

iv Eufus Obadiah, b. May 4, 1819, m. Elizabeth , and had 

children. He d. Sept. 6, 1870, and is buried at Bill- 
town. 

V Mary Ann, b. Nov. 18, 1821. - 

Hon. Johns Morton, M. L. C. (LemueP, Elkanahi), b. March 26, 
1781, m. April 28, 1810, Ann, dau. of Mason and Lydia Cogswell, d. 
March 18, 1868. He d. at the residence of his son, George Elkana, in 
Halifax, March 3, 1858. See Personal Sketches. Children: 

i Major George Elkana, b. March 25, 1811, m. Martha Eliza- 
beth Katzmann, and had 2 children. See Personal 
Sketches. 

ii Isabella Alice, b. May 9, 1813, m. Sept. 19, 1839, to Eev. 
William Thomas Wishart, b, in Scotland, June 9, 
1809. 

iii Lydia, b. May 23, 1815, m. Sept. 19, 1839, to Edward 
Langley Lydiard, and had 5 sons, and 1 dau. Mrs. 
Lydiard d. Nov. 6, 1856. 

iv Martha Ann, b. June 10, 1817, m. May 25, 1841, to John 
Elkanah Forsyth, M. D., son of Eev. Wm. Forsyth 
and had 3 sons and 2 daughters. Mr. Forsyth d. 
June 27, 1872. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 755 

V Lemuel James, b. Nov. 22, 1819, was a merchant in Hali- 
fax, and a director of the Halifax Banking Company. 
vi William Mason, b. Jan. 3, 1822, d. April 14, 1839. 
vii Hezekiah Holmes, b. Sept. 28, 1824, d. Jan. 29, 1827. 
viii Mary Rebecca, b. June 20, d. Aug. 28, 1827. 



THE MURDOCH FAMILY 
The Rev. James Murdoch, who has been spoken of in the fore- 
going pages as the first Presbyterian minister in the county, was 
the only son of John and Margaret (Dryden) Murdoch, of Gillie 
Gordon, county of Donegal, Ireland, and was born there in 1745. 
He was ordained by the Presbytery of Newton Limavady, in Ire- 
land, Sept. 2, 1766, and almost immediately after, sailed for 
Halifax. At Halifax he preached for a short time to the Congre- 
gationalists, then he came to Horton and organized a church of the 
General Associate or Antiburgher branch of the Presbyterian body. 
In Horton he received a grant of land, and thither his parents, his 
grandmother Murdoch, and his only sister, Elizabeth, who later 
became the wife of Matthew Frame, before long followed him. 
In the Horton pastorate Eev. James Murdoch remained until prob- 
ably 1787, his successor, who came in 1791, being the Rev. George 
Gilmore. In 1795 he assumed the pastorate of the Presbyterian 
Church at Musquodoboit. John Murdoch, father of Rev. James, 
d. in Horton in 1790, his wife Margaret d. Dec. 3, of the same year, 
both aged 72. Rev. James Murdoch m. in Halifax, July 24, 1771, 
Abigail, dau. of Malachy Salter, M. P. P., a Boston merchant 
living in Halifax. A short biography of Mr. Murdoch in the 
2nd vol. of the N. S. Hist. Soc. Reports says that he had ten 
children, six of whom were sons, one of these being a lieutenant, 
R. N. The last person in Nova Scotia to bear his name was Beamish 
Murdoch, the historian, who d. unmarried in 1875, in his 75th 
year. Rev. James Murdoch's children were: Susannah, b May 30, 
1772 m. as his 2nd wife to William Duffus, b. in Banff, Scotland, Aug. 
12, 1762 [and had children: Susan Duffus, m. to Sir Samuel 
Cunard, Bart.; Mary Anne Duffus, m. to John Morrow; 



756 KING'S COUNTY 

"William Duffus, m. Catherine McDougall; John Duffus, m. Janet 
Grinton ; Alexander Duffus ; Margaret Duffus, m. to William Suther- 
land ; Elizabeth Duffus m. to Henry Cunard] ; Margaret, b. Nov. 1, 
1773; Ann or Nancy, b. Sept., 1775, d. Sept. 8, 1776; Andrew, b. 
July 8, 1777, the father of Beamish Murdoch, the historian ; William 
Salter, b Oct. 5, 1780; Sarah, b. Dec. 5, 1782; Ann or Nancy, b. Oct. 
4, 1786 ; Joseph, b. April 5, 1789 ; James, b. May 22, 1791 ; Abigail, 
b. May 3, 1793 ; Benjamin, b. June 11, 1796. 



THE MUSGRAVE FAMILY 

This distinguished Musgrave family was for many years repre- 
sented in King's County by the Hon. and Rev. Burnthorn Mus- 
grave, M. L. C. of Antigua, W. I., second son of Anthony Mus- 
grave, M. D. (Edinburgh), Treasurer of Antigua from 1825 to 1852, 
and his wife, Mary Harris Sheriff, and older brother of Sir Anthony 
Musgrave, 0. C. M. C, Lieut.-Governor, successively, of St. Vincent, 
Newfoundland, British Columbia, and Natal, and Governor of South 
Australia, Jamaica, and Queensland. 

Hon. Burnthorn Musgrave, who was first a sugar planter in Anti- 
gua, and then a clergyman of the Reformed Episcopal Church of 
America, was b. in Antigua, March 11, 1823, and m. there, June 30, 
1847, Frances Albony, dau, of John Adams and Margaret (Albony) 
Wood, and d. at "Holmworth, " Auburn, King's County, where he 
settled in May, 1870, July 29, 1894. His wife d. there in 1893. He 
had children: Hon. Anthony, C. M. G., M. E. C, and M. L. C, of 
British New Guinea ; Burnthorn, m. at Halifax, in 1885, Anna, dau. 
of Dr. David Honeyman ; George, of the firm of Musgrave and Co., 
Halifax, who m. June 6, 1888, Charlotte Geddie, dau. of William 
Harris Harrington; Fanny Wood; Margaret Albony, m. Sept. 25, 
1876, to Burpe Beckwith, M. D., son of Mayhew Beckwith, M. P. P., 
of Cornwallis; Amy. See "Burke's Colonial Gentry." 



THE NEILY FAMILY 

For the Neily family see the Calnek-Savary History of Annapolis 
County. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 757 

NEWCOMB FAMILIES 

Among the Cornwallis grantees were three Newcomb brothers, 
Deacon John, Benjamin, and Simon; and besides these two sons 
of Deacon John, Captain Eddy, and John, Jr., and one son of Ben- 
jamin, William. Before coming to Nova Scotia, Deacon John New- 
comb and his family were among the most prominent persons in 
Lebanon, Conn., Deacon John being a rather large land owner there. 

Deacon Johni Newcomb (Simon, Andrew, Andrew), son of Simon 
and Deborah, was born in Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard, Mass., 
about 1688, and married there, Sept. 23, 1709, Alice, dau. of Jona- 
than Lnmbert, b. in 1689. Before March 20, 1715, he removed to 
Lebanon, where he served as deacon of the Second Church from 
1718 to 1760. In 1761 he became a grantee in Cornwallis. Children : 

i Catherine, b. May 21, 1710, m. to Noah, son of George 

and Sarah Webster, 

ii Alice, b. March 24, 1712, m. in 1733, to Jonathan Marsh. 

iii Capt. Eddy, b. Sept. 23, 1713, m. Abigail, dau. of Richard 
and Mary English. 

iv Abigail, b. Nov. 16, 1715, m. Nov. 9, 1738, to John English 
(brother of Abigail above), and after her husband's 
death became a grantee in Cornwallis. 

V Abraham, b, July 22, 1718, d. May 10, 1732. 

vi John, Jr., b. July 29, 1720, m. (1) Mercy Barnaby, (2) De- 
borah Miller. 

vii Jonathan, b. Aug. 21, 1722, in Lebanon, m. Nov, 9, 1746, 
Deborah Tupper. He came to Cornwallis and d. May 
16, 1765. He had 5 daughters, who lived in Conn. 

viii Jacob, b. Oct. 10, 1724, m. in Conn., Elizabeth Hamilton, 
and had 7 children. He probably intended to come 
to Nova Scotia, but did not. In the War of the Revo- 
lution he fought on the American side . He d. 
in 1777, "a martyr in the service." 

Capt. Eddy2 Newcomb (Deacon John^ and Alice), b. either in 

Edgartown, Mass., or Lebanon, Conn., Sept. 23, 1713, m. Abigail, dau. 

of Richard and Mary English, b. in Lebanon, Nov. 12, 1724. He d. 

about 1781, his wife d. about 1790. He is said to have served as 

Captain under Cornwallis, in the War of the Revolution, and to 

have been taken prisoner with him and his army, Oct. 19, 1781, 

Children : 



758 KING'S COUNTY 

i Elizabeth, b. June 12, 1743, m. to Eliakim Tupper. 

ii Abraham, b. April 15, 1745, m. Mary Tupper, 

iii Andrew, b. April 15, 1747, m. Jerusha Bigelow. 

iv John, b. May 15, 1752, m. Sarah Randall. 

V Obadiah, b. March 16, 1755, d. in 1774, unm. 

vi Abigail, b. June 8, 1757, m. to Samuel Whidden, of Truro, 
and d. in 1818. 

vii Sarah, b. Sept. 4, 1760, n Cornwallis, m. Jan. 3, 1781, to 
James, son of James and Margaret Hutchins (prob- 
ably Hutchinson) and d. in 1834. She is said to 
have been the first white child bom to the New Eng- 
land planters in Cornwallis. 

viii David, b, Oct. 18, 1763, d. in 1776. 

ix Phebe, b. July 23, 1768, d. young. 

Jolin2 Newcomb, Jr., (Deacon John^ and Alice), b. in Lebanon, 
Conn., July 29, 1720, m. (1) June 5, 1747, Mercy, dau. of Timothy 
and Martha Barnaby, of Plymouth, Mass. Mercy Newcomb d. March 
27, 1776, and he m. (2) Feb. 13, 1777, Mrs. Deborah MiUer. He d. 
April 13, 1778. It is said that he had in all 21 children, part of 
whom d. young. The children whose names are remembered are as 
follows. Children : 

i Joseph, b. July 8, 1751, m. Catherine Rand. 

ii Benjamin, b. Feb. 22, 1753, m. Abigail Sanford. 

iii John, b. Feb. 16, 1756, m. (1) Thankful Burgess, (2) Mrs. 
Sarah (Peck) Johnson. 

iv Catherine, b. April 11, 1758, m. April 7, 1774, David, son 
of Samuel and Miriam Beckwith. 

V Martha, b. Oct. 12, 1760, in Cornwallis, m. June 7, 1780, 
to Major Lemuel Morton, M. P. P., and d. Feb. 11, 
1838. He d. April 30, 1811. 

vi Alice, b. Jan. 21, 1763, m. June 30, 1785, to Roland Mor- 
ton, bro. of Major Lemuel, M. P. P., and d. March 
12, 1791. 

vii Mary, b. April 12, 1764, m. Oct. 1, 1782, to Jedediah, son 
of John and Eleanor Crocker. 

viii Lydia, b. Feb. 16, 1766, d. unm. 

ix Ruth, b. Feb. 18, 1768, m. Feb. 14, 1787, to Samuel San- 
ford, and d. July 10, 1815. 

X Jonathan, b. Nov. 5, 1770, m. Margaret Cummings, and 
was the ancestor of Hon. Edmund Leslie Newcomb, 
C. M. C, K. C, LL. B. 

xi Jacob, b. Jan. 6, 1776, m. Wealthy Terry. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 759 

Abraham" Newcomb (Capt. Eddy 2, Dea. Jolini), b. in Lebanon, 
April 15, 1745, m. iu N. S., Dec. 11, 1765, Mary, dau. of Elias and 
Jerusha Tupper, of Annapolis county. He d. in Cornwallis, April 
25, 1832 (or April 26, 1831). She d. Nov. 30, 1793, or 1800. 
Cliildren : 

i Abraham, b. July 28, 1770, m. Ann Dickie. 

ii Elizabeth, b. Sept. 14, 1772, m. (1) to Deacon Eliakim 
Morton, (2) to Joseph Pearce. 

iii James, b. Oct. 12, 1774, m. April 4, 1803, Mrs. Mary Wood. 

iv Obadiah, b. Feb. 6, 1777, m. (1) Lydia Huntington, (2) 
Kebecea Morton. 

V Mary, b. Feb. 23, 1779, m. to Silas Bent, and lived in An- 
napolis county. 

vi Eliakim Tupper, b. Nov. 2, 1784, m. and d. s. p., about 
1841. 

Andrew^ Newcomb (Capt. Eddy^, Dea. John^), b. in Lebanon, April 
15, 1747, m, in Cornwallis, Dec. 4, 1776, Jerusha, dau. of Isaac and 
Abigail Bigelow, b. March 19, 1749. About 1796 he removed to 
N. B. He d. at Kingselear, N. B., Jan. 12, 1828. He had 9 children : 
Andrew; Ruby; Timothy; Jerusha; John; Samuel; Elijah; Elia- 
kim; Daniel Webster. 

John^ Newcomb (Capt. Eddy^, Dea. Johni), ^ j^ Lebanon, March 
15, 1752, m. in Cornwallis, March 30, 1769, Sarah, dau. of David and 
Kezia Randall. Not much is known of his later life. He d. it is 
supposed, in the United States. His only child, so far as is known, 
was Eddy, b. Dec. 15, 1769, m. (1) Waity Sanford, (2) Mary West, 
(3) Alice Porter. 

Joseph^ Newcomb (John^, Jr., Dea. John^), b. in Lebanon, July 
8, 1751, m. April 6, 1774, Catherine, dau. of Caleb and Mercy Rand. 
He d. April 17, 1832, his wife d. March 17, 1831. Children : 

i Catherine, b. March 15, 1775, m. Dec. 13, 1792, Handley, 
son of Capt. John Beckwith. 

ii Caleb, b. March 27, 1777, m. (1) in April, 1802, Lydia, 
dau. of Jonathan and Lydia Rand, (2) Oct. 11, 1816, 
Phebe, dau. of William and Sarah Canady. 

iii John, b. May 13, 1779, m. Mary Robinson. 

iv Marcy, twin with John, m. to John Randall. 



760 KING'S COUNTY 

V Joseph, b, Jan. 14, 1781, m. Ruth Lyons, 

vi Benjamin, b. June 25, 1783, m. Abigail Sanford. 

vii Daniel Webster, b. April 7, 1786, m. (1) Nancy Lyons, (2) 

Charity Grant, 
viii Mayhew, b. Aug. 2, 1788, m. Mary Lyons, 
ix Mary Matilda, b. Oct. 12, 1798, m. Oct. 26, 1820, to James 

Mackenzie. 

Benjamin^ Newcomb (John^, Jr., Dea. John^), b. in Lebanon, Feb. 
22, 1753, m. June 6, 1776, Abigail, dau. of Benjamin and Amelia 

Sanford, who d. in 1840, He was a musician and poet and is remem- 
bered to have written several songs. See Newcomb Genealogy, p. 110. 
Their children were: James, m. Rachel (Cunnabell) Sheffield, widow 
of Stephen Sheffield ; Catherine, m. to Jonathan Coldwell ; Sarah, m. 
to John Bigelow and lived in Pugwash; Susannah, m. to Gideon 
Davidson ; David, m. Elizabeth Fisher ; Barnaby, m. Rebecca Pineo ; 
Elizabeth, m. to Elijah Pineo ; Benjamin, d. unm, ; Eddy, m. to Sarah 
(lUsley) Sanford, widow of Benjamin; Alice, m. to John Marsh; 
John, m. Mrs. Rebecca (Pineo) Newcomb; Mary, m. (1) to Harris 
Crocker, (2) to Samuel Rand; Eleanor, d. unm.; Hezekiah, d. unm.; 
Simon, m. Lydia Ells. 

Jonathan^ Newcomb (John^, Jr., Dea. Johni), b. in Cornwallis, 
Nov. 5, 1770, m. March 31, 1796, Margaret, dau. of James Cum- 
mings, from Inverness, b. Jan. 9, 1779, d. Jan. 5, 1853. He d. June 
11, 1851. His children were : Abigail, m. to Daniel Cogswell ; Hugh 
Ross, m. Sophia A. Morton; Grizel, m. to David White; Mary, m. to 
James McMasters; Lemuel Morton, m. Matilda Flagg; John Cum- 
mings, b. May 3, 1809, m. Dee. 7, 1853, Abigail, dau. of Elias and 
Mercy (Burgess) Calkin, and d. Jan. 10, 1866; Margaret Alice, m. 
to Solomon Woodworth ; Martha Rebecca, d. unm. ; George Allen, 
d. unm. ; Hannah E., d. unm. ; Daniel, m. Rebecca Orinda Calkin. 

A distinguished member of this family is the Hon. Edmund Leslie 
Newcomb, C. M. G., K. C, LL. B., Deputy Minister of Justice for the 
Dominion of Canada, who was admitted by the King to the Order 
of C M. G. in 1909. Mr. Newcomb is the son of John Cummings 
and Abigail (Calkin) Newcomb (Jonathan^, John^, Jr., Dea. John^) 
and was born in West Cornwallis, Feb. 17, 1859. He graduated 



FAMILY SKETCHES 761 

B. A. at Dalhousie iu 1878, M. A., in 1881, and was called to the 
Nova Scotia bar in 1883. He practiced first in Kentville with 
Judge John Pryor Chipman, and then in Halifax with the present 
Mr. Justice Meagher of the Supreme Court. In 1893 he was made 
Deputy Minister of Justice for the Dominion, and in this position 
has rendered valuable service to Canada. 

Jacob^ Newcomb (John^, Jr., Dea. John^), b. Jan. 6, 1776, m. Dec, 
25, 1804, Wealthy, eldest dau. of Ephraim and Anna Terry, b. Oct. 
30, 1778, d. Jan. 27, 1847. He d. Aug. 4, 1854. Children : Charles 
English; Ephraim Terry; George Washington; John Terry, b. Dec. 
22, 1816, m. March 7, 1844, Nancy, 3rd, dau. of Peter and Sarah 
Pineo, b. March 23, 1818; William Ritchie, b. May 2, 1819, m. in 
Woodstock, N. B., Feb. 2, 1860, Maria (Grover) Perley, widow of 
Thomas C. ; Anna Terry, m. to Lemuel Kinsman. 

Benjamini Newcomb, son of Simon and Deborah, b. about 1700, 
in Edgartown, Mass., m. Hannah (probably Clark), came from 
Lebanon, Conn., to Cornwallis, in 1761, but after 1775, removed to 
Sunbury county, N. B., where both husband and wife died. Children : 

i Hannah, b. about 1728, m. in Conn., March 23, 1749, to 
William Tanner. 

ii Benjamin, bap. Oct. 12, 1729, prob. d. young. 

iii Simon, bap. Jan, 25, 1730, prob, d, young, 

iv Lydia, bap. June 20, 1731, m. in 1757, in Conn., to Justus 
Sackett. 

V William, b. June 18, 1733, m. Phebe Porter. 

vi Bethiah, b. Feb. 26, 1735, m. in Conn., to David Rajrmond. 

vii Benjamin, bap. Oct. 12, 1746, m. Elizabeth Lewis. 

viii Oliver, m. Mary Ann Mahegan, 

ix Iram, m. Elizabeth Lewis. 

X Deborah, bap. March 25, 1744, m, (1) May 22, 1766, to 
Isaac Miller, (2) to Gallup. 

xi Jemima, bap. March 27, 1748, m. Sept. 18, 1766, in Corn- 
wallis, to Colin Brymer. 

xii Submit, b. 1750-1, m. in Cornwallis, Feb. 9, 1769, to John, 
son of Silas and Sarah (English) Woodworth. 
Simon^ Newcomb, son of Simon and Deborah, b. in Edgartown, 

Mass., about 1705, m. (1) in Edgartown, Nov. 17, 1740, Jerusha, 

dau. of Thomas and Mehitable (Sarson) Lathrop, b. in 1706-7. Mrs. 



762 KING'S COUNTY 

Newcomb d. in Lebanon, Conn., April 13, 1748, in her 42d year, and 
Simon m. (2) Mrs. Jane Worth, probably a sister of his 1st wife. In 
1761 he came from Lebanon to Cornwallis. He d, in Cornwallis ip. 
1774. 

Children by first marriage : 

i Mehitable, b. March 7, 1721-2, m. (1) to Elijah Bent, (2) 
to Capt. Nathan Davidson, of New London, Conn, 

ii Jerusha, b. Jan. 2, 1743-4, m. in Cornwallis, June 22, 1762, 
to Capt. Arehelaus Hammond, and had 5 children. 

iii Simon, 3d, b. Dee. 28, 1745, in Lebanon, Conn,, m, in Corn- 
wallis, in the spring of 1769, Mercy, dau. of Moses 
and Desire (Burris) Gore, formerly of New London, 
b. in 1750. He removed before 1770, from Cornwallis 
to Fort Cumberland, and soon after to Amherst, N. S. 
He d, Dec, 1776, and his widow was m. (2) to 
Timothy Bishop. She d. in Horton, in 1833. Chil- 
dren of Simon and Mercy (Gore) Newcomb: Simon 
Lathrop, b. June 9, 1770; Deborah; Obadiah; Desire. 

iv Deborah, twin with Simon d. March 9, 1751 in Lebanon. 

V Hope, bap. Aug. 7, 1748, d. Oct. 10, 1748, in Lebanon. 

Children by 2nd marriage : 
vi Mary, b. March 1, 1752, m. in Cornwallis, Jan. 26, 1769, 
to Moses Gore, Jr., son of Moses and Desire (Burris) 
Gore, b. in Norwich, Conn., May 4, 1744. They both 
d. before 1797. Children: Sarah, m. to Thomas 
Rand; Hannah, m. to Roland Morton; Mary, m. to 
Joseph Starr; Desire, m. to John Starr, M. P. P.; 
Mercy, d. young. 

The eminent Professor Simon^ Newcomb, LL. D., D. C. L., etc.. etc., 
who died in Washington, D. C, July 11, 1909, was of this family. 
His grandfather Simon Lathrop Newcomb, son of Simon and De- 
sire (Gore) Newcomb, was b. at Fort Cumberland, June 9, 1770, and 
m. at Pictou in 1799, Jane, dau. of Matthew Harris of Pictou, b. 
in 1771, d. in Wallace, N. S., Feb. 3, 1863. His 5th child was John 
Burton, b. in Pictou, July 10, 1809, m. at Moncton, N. B., March 
13,1834, Emily A., dau. of Thomas Prince, b. Sept. 10, 1813, d. Oct. 
31, 1851, and in 1852 went with his family to the United States. His 
eldest son was Professor Simon Newcomb, the great astronomer, b. 
in Wallace, March 12, 1835. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 763 

THE NORTH FAMILY 

The Cornwallis Town Book records that Johni North, son of 
John and Mary North, of Birmingham, Warwickshire, England, m. 
in Cornwallis (Rev. Benaiah Phelps, officiating), Oct. 12, 1770, 
Mary, dau. of William and Jean West. He m. (2) in 1812, accord- 
ing to the Cornwallis Town Book, Mary Jones. Children : 

i William, b. Sept. 8, 1771, m. April 20, 1797, Lois, dau. of 
Stephen and Elizabeth Strong, b. Aug. 12, 1770. 
Children: Mary, b. Feb. 11, 1798, m. Oct. 20, 1818, 
to James Illsley; Esther, b. Jan. 14, 1800; John b. 
April 23, 1802, m. (1) Ann Illsley, (2) Elizabeth Fox; 
Olive, b. June 10, 1804; Samuel, b. Dee. 28, 1806; 
Charlotte, b. Feb. 4, 1809 ; William, b. Aug. 16, 
1811; Elizabeth, b. March 13, 1814; Stephen, b. 
Oct. 4, 1817, m. Elizabeth, dau. of Barnaby and 
Rebecca (Pineo) Neweomb, b. Sept. 15, 1820. 
ii Isaac Hiram, b. April 30 (or 31), 1785, m. Dec. 29, 1806 
(or '07), Abigail, dau. of Daniel and Lucy Wood, 
b. Jan. 4, 1784. Children: Daniel, b. Nov. 3, 1807 

(or '08); Ruth Ann, b. Feb. 8, 1811, m. to 

Knowles; (Harriett, b. May 8, 1813, m. to 

Margeson; Richard, b. March 19, 1816, m. Rebecca 
Manning Tupper; Lucy, b. April 24, 1819; John, 
b. Oct. 4, 1822 ; Isaac N., b. Sept. 16, 1825. 
iii Sarah West, b. in 1790, m. June 2, 1812, to John, son of 
Abraham and Elizabeth Masters, and d. Jan. 29, 
1850, aged 60. 
iv Elizabeth, m. Nov. 29, 1813, to Enoch, son of Daniel and 
Lucy Wood. 
(There may have been other daughters, we do not know.) 

Johns North (William^, John^), b. April 23, 1802, m. (1) Jan. 19, 
1825, Ann, dau. of Randall Illsley, (2) Oct. 13,1830, Elizabeth, dau. of 
Benjamin Fox. Children by 1st wife: John Baxter, b. Nov. 2, 1825; 
Julia Ann, b. July 13, 1827 ; Isaac, b. Sept. 5, 1829. Children by 2nd 
wife: Sarah Jane, b. July 21, 1831; William Andrew, b. June 3, 
1834; Mary Elizabeth, b. Jan. 18, 1842. 

Richard^ North, (Isaac Hiram^, Johni), b. March 19, 1816, m. in 
1839, Rebecca Manning Tupper, b. March 31, 1815, dau. of Augustus 
and Mary (Foster) Tupper, and first cousin of Sir Charles Tupper, 
Bart. He d. in Nov., 1872 ; she d. Dec. 5, 1901. Children : Charles 



764 KING'S COUNTY 

Edwin, m. Sarah Monroe, and d. j. p., in 1864; James Norman, b. 
Sept. 10, 1841, m. Fanny Rebecca Howe, and had 4 children, (a) 
Elizabeth Rebecca, (b) Marion Howe, (c) Norman Howe, (d) Carl- 
ton; Mary, m. to Joseph C. F. Cheever; John Milton, d. in 1850; 
Augustus Tupper, d. in 1858; Isaac Franklin, b. Feb. 22, 1851, m. 
Addie Willard Chapin, of Bangor, Me., and had one child, who d. 
young; William Howard, b. Jan. 1, 1853, m. Susie Caroline Magee, 
and had two children — (a) Grace Caroline, m. to Edmund F. Clarke; 
(b) Howard Manning, m. Ethel Gwyer, of Mt. Vernon, N. Y. ; Louis 

Arthur, b. Feb. 2, 1854, m. Miller, of Macon, Georgia, and had 

one daughter. Among the prominent merchants of Boston, Mass., 
are the Messrs. James Norman, Isaac Franklin, and William How- 
ard North. 

THE ORPIN FAMILY 

Among the Halifax settlers who came in the ship Canning from 
England in 1749, were, Edward Orpin and wife, and Samuel 
Orpin, both men, apparently with small families and both given as 
"husbandmen." In the chapter on Aylesford it will be seen that 
George and Joseph Orpin, both probably sons of Edward (the 
latter we know was), were grantees of Aylesford in 1810. Accord- 
ing to the Aylesford Town Book, Joseph Orpin (a newspaper 
writer calls him Joseph Moore Orpin) m. Ann or Anna Johnson, 
and had children: Margaret Lavinia, b. May 7, 1786; Ann, b. 
May 24, 1788, m. Aug. 25, 1813, to John Dempsey, Jr.; Samuel, b. 
July 26, 1790; James, b. Feb. 1, 1793; Joseph, Jr., b. Aug. 28, 
1795; Henrietta, b. Oct. 30, 1799; Robert Mellein, b. May 25, 
1803; John, b. Feb. 1, 1807. A John Orpin m., Aug. 29, 1793, 
Sarah Beckwith, and had children : Ann, b. June 7, 1794 ; William, 
b. Dec. 9, 1797 ; Andrew, b. Feb. 25, 1800 ; Isaac, b. March 26, 1802 ; 
Edward, b. July 21, 1804; Thomas, b. Feb. 22, 1807; Margaret 
Lavinia, b. May 22, 1810; Samuel, b. Oct. 3, 1813. A Moses 
Orpin m. March 5, 1820, Elizabeth Patterson, and had five chil- 
dren. A Margaret Orpin was m. Feb. 25, 1811, to Thomas Cook. 
A John Orpin was b. Jan. 31, 1812. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 7G5 

Of one, at least, of the Orpin grantees, and the family from 
which he sprang, a writer in the Halifax Herald of January 25, 
1899, gave the following interesting account: — 

"Among the enterprising pioneers who first came to this part 
of the country to make of the wilderness a fruitful field, was Joseph 
Moore Orpin and his wife, Anna Johnson Orpin. Mr. Orpin 's father, 
Edward Orpin, was one of the founders of the city of Halifax. He 
first took up. land on the Dartmouth side of the harbor, and employed 
men to subdue and clear it of a forest of trees and a heavy crop of 
stone. 

*'One day while he was on his way with a lad, sixteen years old, 
nmed Etherton, carrying dinner to the men working on his land, 
he was surprised and captured by the Indians. They compelled 
silence and began their march with their captives in the direction 
of Shubenacadie. They had not gone far when one of the Indians 
gave the boy a heavy blow, felling him to the ground. Instantly 
his crown was scalped and he was left for dead. 

"After travelling some distance, Mr. Orpin found that one of his 
shoes was unbuckled. He stopped and pointed it out to the 
Indian walking behind him. As he stooped down to buckle it 
the Indian stepped ahead of him. Orpin saw his chance, caught 
up a hemlock knot, and as quick as lightning gave the Indian a 
blow which brought him to the ground. He had confidence in his 
own fleetness of foot. Instantly he was flying for liberty. 

"As soon as the Indians in advance discovered the trick, and 
recovered from their surprise, they gave him chase. But Orpin was 
too fleet for them. He escaped and reached home in safety. Strange 
to relate the boy returned to the city soaked from head to foot in 
his own blood. The doctors of the city did what they could to 
heal his scalp wound. They succeeded only in part. Directed by 
them a silversmith made a silver plate, which the young fellow 
wore over his unhealed wound. After a time he returned to Eng- 
land. 

"In the same year Mr. Orpin had still another adventure with 
the red-skinned neighbors of the young colony. On this occasion. 



766 KING'S COUNTY 

too, ke was on his way to the place where his men were at work, 
carrying them their dinners. Again he was seized by the skulking 
Micmacs, and hurried away toward Shubenacadie. After reach* 
ing one of the lakes, the Indians stopped to take a meal. For a 
special treat, Mr. Orpin was carrying a bottle of rum to his men 
with their dinners. At the lake the Indians drank the whole of it, 
and it made them helplessly drunk. This was good fortune for 
the captive. He reached Halifax again with the scalp safe on his 
head. This last experience made him more cautious for a long 
time. The stony ground in Dartmouth, and his trouble with the 
Micmacs, induced him to give up his Dartmouth lot and commence 
anew on the Halifax side of the harbor, 

' ' Some years later, he went to the North West Arm, He never 
returned. Diligent and thorough search was made for him; but 
he could not be found. The belief at the time was the Indians 
caught him again and took secret revenge on him in torturing him 
to death at their leisure. 

"His son, Joseph Moore Orpin, married Miss Anna Johnson, of 
Halifax. Shortly after their marriage, they moved into the wilder- 
ness in the township of Aylesford. The land on which they settled 
was on the southern slope of the North Mountain, just north of the 
Episcopal church, in Aylesford. There they began life under sha- 
dow of the forest primeval. 

"In 1808, there was born to Joseph Moore Orpin and his wife 
Anna, a babe. They called his name John. Traveling from Ayles- 
ford to Morden, the place on the shore where the Acadians camped, 
one passes a large willow tree on the right hand side of the road, 
on the mountain side. This tree marks the old Orpin homestead. 
To support itself, this venerable willow, about seven feet in diam- 
eter, grasps the side of the mountain in a firm embrace. Its annual 
rings register the history of Aylesford. It was here that John 
Orpin first looked out upon the world. A picturesque view he had 
from his cradle on the mountain side, 

' ' With ninety years now sitting gracefully on his venerable brow, 
he is spending the summer evening of his long life in a cozy cottage. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 767 

nestling among the shmbbery just out of the reach of the waves 
of the Bay of Fiindy, and on the spot where the Acadians spent 
their black winter. The ninety winters which have gone over his 
head have not wrought great havoc on his manly form. In his 
prime he stood about six feet high. His body in mould and grace 
was like a Greek statue — ^his brow high and intellectual, his nose 
prominent and of the Roman type, his mouth finely formed, indicat- 
ing mildness and solidity of character; arms and legs symmetrical 
and firmly knit together with heavy muscles and nerves magnetic, 
mercurial and ready at the call of his will, to flash into his muscular 
system almost superhuman power." 



THE OSBORN FAMILY 

The Osborn family is said to have been transplanted to Nova 
Scotia from Martha's Vineyard, and this statement is probably true. 
Nov. 24, 1774, Sarah Osborn, dau. of Samuel and Sarah Osborn, 
was m. at Passamaquoddy (either in Maine or in New Brunswick), 
by John Curry, J. P., to Charles Skinner. Ann Osborn, sister of 
Sarah, was m. in Cornwallis in 1778, to William Allen Chipman, 
and Ann is said to have heen of St. John, N. B. Wilmot Osborn, 
a brother of these women, m. in Cornwallis, June 17, 1800, Lydia, 
dau. of Robert and Jerusha (Bill) Kinsman, (2) March 7, 1810, 
Sarah, dau. of Abraham and Elizabeth Seaborn Wolfe (Wood- 
worth) Masters. 

The name ''Wilmot" suggests the possibility of a connection 
between the Wilmot family of N. B. and the Osborns, and we have 
also the significant fact that the mother of Lemuel Wilmot, founder 
of the New Brunswick Wilmot family and grandfather of Sir 
Lemuel Allen Wilmot, governor of N. B., after her first husband, 
Ezekiel Wilmot 's, death was m. to Jonathan Osborn or Osborne. 

Wilmot Osborn of Cornwallis and his second wife Sarah (Mas- 
ters) had children: Mary Lavinia, b. Nov. 26, 1810; John, b. Aug. 
2, 1812; Sarah Alice, b. May 12, 1814; Abraham Masters, b. Nov. 
13, 1815; Rebecca Jane, b. Sept. 17, 1816; Elizabeth, b. Oct. 15, 
1818 ; Roxanna, b. Nov. 1, 1823 ; Samuel, b. July 24, 1825. 



768 KING'S COUNTY 

THE PALMER FAMILY 

Lewisi Palmer of Westchester, N. Y., and his wife Rachel 
(Fowler) were among the New York Loyalist^ who settled in 
Nova Scotia. In Bolton's History of Westchester will be found a 
long accoimt of Lewis Palmer, who lost almost everything he had 
in the Revolution. With some of their seven children Lewis and 
Rachel (Fowler) Palmer in 1783 or '84 came to Shelburne, N. S., 
but they probably later removed to Aylesford. They had in all 
seven children, of whom Benjamin, b. in 1751, and his sons, Elijah 
M., and Enoch Lewis, like the founder of the family, Lewis, March 
23, 1810, received grants of land in Aylesford. 

Benjamin^ Palmer (Lewis^), b. in 1751, m. in Westchester, 
Philena, dau. of Enoch and Betsey (Fowler) Hunt, and had by her 
10 children. He d. in 1847, She d. in 1850, aged 88. Children: 

i Enoch, d. young. 

ii Rachel, m. Dec. 11, 1806, to William Henry Robinson. 

iii Elijah, b. in 1784, m. July 21, 1811, Elizabeth, dau. of 
Henry and Margaret Robinson, and had children: 
Mary Jane, b. Aug. 17, 1812; Benjamin Lawrence, 
b. March 29, 1817; Eliza, b. Aug. 7, 1819; Amy, b. 
Aug. 5, 1822; Louisa, b. June 9, 1824; Ann, b. 
Dec. 7, 1826; Sarah N. and Thomas Richard, twins, 
b. Aug. 25, 1829. 

iv Betsey, m. to John Taylor. 

V Enoch Lewis, b. April 24, 1788, m. March 11, 1813, 
Margaret, dau. of Robert Robinson, and had chil- 
dren: Maria, b. July 11, 1814; Elijah, b. Sept. 28, 
1815; Benjamin, b. Sept. 3, 1816; Elizabeth Lavinia, 
b. May 1, 1818; Margaret Pamelia, b. March 5, 
1820; Mary Caroline, b. Feb. 20, 1822; Philena, 
b. Jan. 22, 1824; John Robinson, b. May 6, 1825; 
William Richard, b. Feb. 27, 1827; Matilda, b. Nov. 
5, 1829; Enoch Lewis, b. April 17, 1831; Susan, b. 
Jan. 6, 1834; (Rev.) James, b. April 6, 1837; Henry, 
b. Aug. 29, 1839. 

vi Alfred Parker, m. March 7, 1827, Charlotte Magee. 

vii Benjamin, b. in 1790. 

viii Philena, b. June 15, 1799. 

ix Margaret Ann, b. Jan. 22, 1800. 

X John Inglis, b. Nov. 13, 1802. 

xi Mary Pamela, b. Oct. 28, 1806. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 769 

THE PARISH FAMILY 

Joel^ Parish, son of Joel (Samuel, John) and Elizabeth (Green) 
Parish, of Canterbury, Conn., m. in Cornwallis, Aug. 9, 1792, 
Elizabeth, dau. of Samuel and Mehitable Kelley. Children: 
Rebecca, b. Oct. 2, 1798; Joel, b. Dec. 19, 1804; Enoch, b. April 
15, 1807; William Daniel, b. Oct. 6, 1809; John Anderson, b. Oct. 
15, 1812 ; Samuel, b. April 27, 1816 ; Ezekiel, b. Nov. 16, 1818. 

Solomon^ Parish, son of Solomon (Samuel, John) and Dinah 
(Wood) Parish, of Mansfield, Conn., b. June 3, 1754, m. (1) in 
Cornwallis, Jan. 7, 1784, Bethiah, dau. of Daniel and Experience 
Parker. Children: Metaphor, b. Dec. 25, 1785, m. Nov. 10, 1815, 
Rebecca, dau. of George Bennett; John, b. July 19, 1788; Elisha, 
b. Jan. 1, 1790, m. Nov. 2, 1814, Rebecca, dau. of Timothy and Eunice 
Thorp. Solomon Parish m. (2) Jan. 9, 1805, Tamar, dau. of Oliver 
Thorp. Child: David Egerton, b. Jan. 8, 1808. See N. E. Hist, 
and Gen. Register, October, 1909. 



THE PARKER FAMILY 

A certain number of families in King's County belong more 
strictly to Annapolis county than to King's. Such are the families 
of Neily, Nichols, Parker, Saunders, Spinney, Sehafner, and Wel- 
ton. The origin and much of the record of the Parker family in 
Annapolis and King's is given in the Calnek-Savary History of 
Annapolis and in the Chute Genealogies and it would be superfluous 
to repeat it here. The founder of the family in Annapolis was 
Major Nathaniel Parker, born in Dorchester, Mass., in 1743, a soldier 
at the taking of Quebec. His son William, b. about 1770, m. in 1790, 
Lydia Benjamin and settled in Aylsford, where he d. in 1846. He had 
children : Silas, b. in 1790, m. Nancy Baleom ; Mary, b. in Jan. 1792, 
m. (1) to Job Randall, (2) to Joseph Wade; Deacon Abel, b. Nov. 8, 
1793, m. Susan Morse ; Salome, b. Sept. 2, 1796, m. to Jonas Baleom ; 
Miriam, b. Sept. 1, 1799, m. (1) to William Chase, (2) to B. Foster 
Chute; Rev. Obadiah, b. Nov. 24, 1803, m. (1) Hannah Maria 
Morse, (2) Mary Baleom; Susanna, b. Nov. 24, 1805, m. to Daniel 



770 KING'S COUNTY 

Morse; Edward, b. March 1, 1808, m. Evalina Morse; Nathaniel, b. 
Oct. 14, 1810 ; Rev. James, b. Aug. 25, 1813, m. Phebe Durland. 

Another son of Major Nathaniel was Henry Alline, b. in 1774. 
He m. Hannah, dan. of Abner Morse, and also settled in Aylesford, 
where he d. in 1871. His children were: Stephen, b. in 1802; 
Diadama, b. in 1803, m. to Enoch Parish; Elizabeth, b. in 1805, 
m. to Ezekiel Banks; Rachel, b. in 1807, m. to John Hodges; 
Daniel, b. in 1811, d. young; Handley, b. in 1813, m. Mary J. 
(Palmer) Jackson; Rev. Willard G., b. n 1816, m. Lois Nichols 
Ruggles; Church Morse, b. in 1819, m. Lydia Porter; Sophia, b. 
in 1822, m. to Henry Ewing; Andrew B., b. in 1824, m. Ruth 
Miner; Rev. Warren Longley, b. in 1826, m. Sarah Ewing; Miriam, 
d. unm. ; Lydia, d. unm. 

The most prominent person of this family in the county in his 
time, was Deacon Abel Parker (William, Major Nathaniel) b. Nov. 
8, 1793. He m. Jan. 25, 1821, Susan dau. of Daniel and Jane 
(Woodbury) Morse (one of whose sisters, Seraph Morse was m. to 
Amos Patterson, another, Isabel, to Sidney Welton), and had nine 
Children. One of their sons was Rev. David Obadiah Parker, who 
has written affectionately of his mother: "The hospitability of 
her home (in Berwick) knew no limit. Before the advent of rail- 
roads or even of the stage-coach her house was widely known as 
a free house of entertainment for all comers. I have heard what 
a trying ordeal it was to her pride ; with one child in her arms and 
another in the cradle, in the early days here in the wilderness, with 
uncarpeted floors, unfinished rooms, and scant furniture, to en- 
tertain some of her guests. Among these were the Hardings, 
Mannings, and Dimocks, Drs. Oawley and Pryor, Attorney General 
Johnstone, and others of their contemporaries in religion and 
politics. But in the more affluent days of old age she had her 
reward. On her death bed she said: 'The Lord has been good 
to me. He has repaid me many fold. The educating influence of 
these guests on my family has done more for it than all the schools 
of the land could possibly do.' In the early days, with the woods 
all round, and the thousand cares of the household pressing on 



FAMILY SKETCHES 771 

every side she found rest and recreation in the care of her well 
cultivated garden and household flowers. And now there is a 
fragrant sweetness in the memories of the flowers that graced the 
garden in front of the old homestead." 



THE PATTERSON FAMILY 

James^ Patterson m. Nancy Dawson and came from Armagh, 
Ireland, to Halifax, in 1770. Before this couple left Ireland they 
had several children born, and on the passage they had one more. 
After they reached Nova Scotia they had still another, or per- 
haps more than one, born. One of their sons was Alexander, born 
June 24, 1766, and was four years old when the family came from 
Ireland, From Halifax the Pattersons removed to Windsor, N. S., 
and from there part of the family at least, removed to King's 
County. Among early grantees in Aylesford, with dates of grants 
by us not ascertained, were, Alexander, Dawson, James, John, and 
Thomas Patterson. 

AlexandjCr^ Patterson (James^), b. at Armagh, Ireland, June 24, 
1776, m, in King's County, Rebecca, dau. of Amos and Alethea Bill, 
b. in Cornwallis, April 4, 1771. He d. July 31, 1845 ; she d. May 
4, 1855. Children: 

i Amos Bill, d. Nov. 17, 1795. 

ii Dawson, b. Jan. 25 or 26, 1792, d. in Horton in 1872. He 
m. Harriet Ann Hamilton, b. July, 1788, d. Sept. 26, 
1857. Children: Samuel Hamilton, b. Jan. 25, 1817, 
d. May 11, 1869; Alexander, b. Oct. 14, 1821, d. 
Feb. 1, IStS; James, b. Sept. 7, 1823, and 
d. in imO; Elizabeth Mary, b. Dec. 19, 1825, 
d. May 26, 1900; Rebecca Ann, b. Nov. 14, 
1828, d. May 26, 1853 ; Arthur McNutt, b. Dec. 
14 (the Aylesford Town Book says, Dec. 15), 1829, 
founder of "Acacia Villa School"; Isaac Joseph, b. 
in 1831, d. in 1894. Dawson Patterson lived in 
Aylesford, and there all but one of his children were 
born. In 1832 he removed to Horton. His son, 
Arthur McNutt Patterson, was educated in Horton 
under Thomas Soley, John Laird, and Rev. Wm. 
Sommerville, and later at Sackville, N. B., under 



772 KING'S COUNTY 

Rev. Dr. Picard. He taught school first in Horton, 
then for eight years taught in Sackville Academy; 
in 1860 he purchased from J. R. Hea, D. C. L., who 
had founded it in 1852, Acacia Villa School. 

iii James, b. Nov. 14, 1794. 

iv Elizabeth, b. April 30, 1796. 

V Lavinia, b. April 2, 1798. 

vi Amos Bill, b. June 29, 1800, m. Nov. 17, 1825, Sophronia 
Morse. Children: James Samson, b. Aug. 15, 1826; 
Almira Jane b. July 20, 1829; Lysander, b. Aug. 
5, 1831; Isabella, b. Feb. 20, 1834; George Leggett, 
b. Sept. 20, 1836. 

vii Horatio Nelson, b. Sept. 2, 1802, d. at Aylesford, June 
10, 1888. 

viii Alexander, b. Nov. 9, 1805, d. at Aylesford, April 14, 
1891. He m. Nov. 7, 1827, Deborah Tupper. Chil- 
dren: Abigail Tupper, b. Sept. 2, 1828; James 
Alonzo, b. Dec. 5, 1829 ; Francis A., b. Oct. 20, 1831 ; 
Sarah G., b. Aug. 24, 1833 ; Henry Holland, b. Jan. 
17, 1836; Alexander, b. Aug. 23, 1837. 

ix Alethea, b. Feb. 1, 1807. 

X Ebenezer Johnstone, b. Feb. 25, 1810, d. in Aylesford, in 
Aug., 1892. 

The Aylesford Alexander Patterson, who must have been 
a brother of James, m. Jan. 8, 1800, Elizabeth Ogilvie. 
Children : Nancy, b. Aug. 15, 1800 ; Isabella, b. Nov. 3, 1801 ; Eliza, 
b. March 18, 1803; Mary, b. Jan. 20, 1805; Margaret, b. Oct. 18, 
1806 ; Sarah, b. Jan. 18, 1808 ; Susanna, b. Dec. 4, 1810 ; John, b. May 
28, 1812; Rebecca, b. May 7, 1814; Jane, b. June 8, 1816; Lavinia, 
b. April 4, 1818. 

John Patterson, who may have been a brother of James, is said 
to have had a daughter Nancy, b. April 1, 1799, who d. in Ayles- 
ford, at the great age of 100 years and 6 months, Oct. 7, 1899. 
She was m. Oct. 23, 1818, to John Rutherford, and had children 
recorded on the Aylesford Town Book: Susan, b. July 18, 1819; 
John Duncanson, b. May 22, 1821; William Allen, b. Dee. 26, 
1822. Mrs. Rutherford was a devoted member of the Anglican 
Church, and a lifelong friend of the family of Bishop Charles 
Inglis. It was at her house that Dr. Charles Inglis, son 



FAMILY SKETCHES 773 

of Bishop John Inglis, died. A newspaper notice of her 
death said: "Nothwithstanding the long reign of Queen Victoria, 
the late Mrs. Rutherford lived in the reign of three kings of 
England before her, and she has also lived in the episcopate of 
five bishops of Nova Scotia." 

The Aylesford, Dawson Patterson, m. Aug. 4, 1803, Re- 
becca Bennett. Children: Rachel, b,. Nov. 27, 1804; Ephraim, 
b. Nov. 28, 1806; Jane, b. Feb. 25, 1809; James, b. July 14, 1810; 
Mary, b. July 15, 1812; William, b. May 10, 1815; Phebe, b. Jan. 
20, 1819 ; John, twin of Phebe ; Charles, b. Feb. 28, 1820. 

In Aylesford, James Patterson and his wife, (Hamil- 
ton), had children born: Sarah, h. Aug. 19, 1804; Alexander, b. 
Sept. 9, 1807; John I., b. Aug. 26, 1809; Aca H., (?), b. Jan. 20, 
1811; Elizabeth, b. Jan. 30, 1812;, Maria, b. April 26, 1817; 
Harriet, b. Feb. 27, 1820; Eunice, b. March 9, 1822; James, b. 
April 17, 1825 ; Samuel, b. July 2, 1828. 

Amos Bill^ Patterson (Alexander^, James), b. June 29, 1800, m. 

in Annapolis county, Nov. 17, 1824, Seraphine, dau. of Daniel and 

Jane (Woodbury) Morse, b. Feb. 5, 1772. See the Calnek-Savary 

History of Annapolis, p. 553. They lived at Aylesford and their 

children were born there. Children : 

James Sampson, b. Aug. 15, 1826, m. at Somerset, King's 

county, Elvira Bent, and d. June 6, 1861. 
Elmira Jane, b. Jan. 20, 1829, m. to John Wallace Graves, 
and d. at Kingston, King's County, Jan. 31, 1910. 

iii Alexander, b. Aug. 5, 1831, m. Rachel Cary, and d. Sept, 
23, 1872. 

iv Isabella, b. Feb. 28, 1834, m. to George D. Skinner. 

V George Leggett, b. Sept. 20, 1836, d. unm., March 18, 1865. 

vi Nelson Horatio, b. July 23, 1839, m. at Kingston, Susan 
Pearson. 

vii Susan Elizabeth, b. Jan. 18, 1843, m. at Aylesford to 
Frederick Smith. 

viii Henry Winthrop, b. Jan. 11, 1846, m. (1) in Boston, May 
27, 1894, Sarah Jeannette Goodwin, (2) March 3, 
1886, Lela Bowlby. Mr. Patterson is a successful 
and widely known business man of Boston. He 
has two daughters. 



774 KING'S COUNTY 

THE PECK FAMILY 

The Peck family of Horton was transplanted to King's county 
from Lyme, Conn., by two brothers, Benjanun and Silas Peck, 
sons of Samuel and Elizabeth (Lee) Peck, of Lyme. Of these 
brothers, Benjamin Peck, b. March 6, 1711, m. Feb. 8, 1734, 
Sarah Champden, and had children: 

i Dan, b. May 11, 1735, d. young. 

ii Mehitable, b. Jan. 12, 1737. 

iii Benjamin, b. April 26, 1740, m. Hannah Miner. 

iv Dan, b. April 1, 1742, d. young. 

V Elizabeth, b. March 21, 1744, m. to Francis Perkins, and 
had children: Eli, who m. Sarah, dau. of Nathan 
DeWolf, and had children, the youngest dau. of 
whom was Mrs. Gideon Cogswell; William, a 
physician in Falmouth, Jamaica, "W, I.; Cyrus, who 
studied at King's College, Windsor, and took Holy 
Orders. 

vi Cyrus, b. May 2, 1746, m. Mary English. 

vii Elias, b. June 20, 1748. 

viii Sarah, b. Feb. 21, 1750, d. April 4, 1775. 

ix Lee, b. July 1, 1752, prob. m. in Lyme, Elizabeth Marvin. 

X Esther, b. Oct. 30, 1756. 

Benjamin Peck received a grant of 750 acres within the limits of 
the present town of Kentville, the date of the grant being Jan. 10, 
1764. At his death this land was divided between his sons, Benja- 
min and Qyrus. 

Benjamin^, Jr., Peck, (Benjamin^), b. April 26, 1740, in Lyme, m. 
in Horton, Dee. 26, 1763, Hannah, dau. of Sylvanus Miner, Sr., bap. 
in Stonington, Conn., Feb. 17, 1774-5. He d. in Horton, Oct. 24, 
1801, in his 62d year, his wife Hannah dying July 10, 1816, in her 
72d year. Children : 

i Sarah, b. Sept. 23, 1764. 

ii Anna, b. July 17, 1766, m. June 16. 1784, to Benjamin Lee, 

and had at least 2 children : Jeanny, b. Dec. 10, 1784 ; 

Elizabeth, b. Dec. 15, 1787. Anna (Peck) Lee d. 

April 21, 1795. 
iii Hannah, b. Oct. 6, 1768, d. Sept. 8, 1776. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 775 

iv Jerusha, b. Aug. 29, 1770, m. Nov. 24, 1791, to James Pul- 
lertou. 

V Benjamin, 3rd, b. March 25, 1775, m. Mary, dau. of Israel 
Harding, sister of Rev. Harris Harding, and Aunt of 
]\Irs. Joseph Allison, Mrs. Caleb Handley Rand, 
Israel Harding, High Sheriff of Colchester county, 
Mrs, Oliver Cogswell, Jonathan Crane Allison, Wm. 
Henry Allison, and Mrs. Philip Augustus Knaut, of 
Liverpool, N. S. Benjamin and Mary (Harding) 
(Peck) had daughters, the third of vi^hom, Eliza, d. 
Dec. 17, 1803, aged 2 years and 8 months; and a son 
Dan, vs^ho lived only 2 days. Before 1817, Mr. and 
Mrs. Benjamin Peek, 3rd, and their family removed 
to Johnstown, Ohio, Mr. Peck selling his place to 
Captain Joseph Barss, who married Olivia, dau. of 
Judge Elisha DeWolf. The Pecks left descendants 
in Johnstown. 

vi Hannah, b. Jan. 4, 1779, m. Nov. 10, 1796, to John Bur- 
bidge Best, and d. May 6, 1798. 

vii Elizabeth, b. April 25, 17 — . 

viii Sabra, b. , d. Oct. 3, 1801, in her 21st year. She is 

buried at Oak Grove cemetery. 

Cyrus2 Peck, (Benjamin^), b. in Lyme, May 2, 1746, m. in Hor- 
ton, Oct. 11, 1770, Mary, dau. of John and Abigail English, and 
sister of Alice English, wife successively of Samuel Willoughby, 
M. D., M. P. P., and David Eaton, of Cornwallis. Mrs. Peck was b. 
in Lebanon, Conn., in 1749, and d. in Horton, May 2, 1808, "aged 
59." Cyrus Peck m. (2), Sept. 1, 1808, Lydia, 5th dau. of Jehiel 
and Phebe (Cobb) DeWolf, and widow of Samuel Starr. He d., 
s. p., April 13, 1812, in his 66th year. 

Silasi Peck, brother of Benjamini, j^ j^ Lyme, Oct. 2, 1724, m. in 
Lyme, Nov. 4, 1746, Elizabeth Calkins, and d. in Lyme, in June, 
1808. He "served as soldier in the French War," and came to Nova 
Scotia before 1764. He soon returned to Lyme, however, and in the 
Revolution, it is said, took part on the American side. It was per- 
haps a dau. of his (though perhaps a dau. of Benjamin^), who was 
m. in Horton, to William, son of John and Sarah (Wallgate) 
Johnson. 



776 KING'S COUNTY 

THE PHELPS FAMILY 

Rev. Benjamin Phelps, son of Nathaniel and Mary Phelp.s, of He- 
bron, Conn., m. in Horton, Nov. 19, 1766 (by Rev. Joseph Bennett), 
Phebe, dau. of Col. Robert and Prudence Denison, of Horton. They 
had children: Elizabeth, b. Aug. 30, 1768; Phebe, b. Oct. 7, 1770; 
Denison, b. Sept. 24. 1772. 

Mr. Phelps' name appears conspicuously elsewhere in this book. 
He was b. at Hebron, March 30, 1737, was graduated at Yale Col- 
lege in 1761, and was ordained for the Cornwallis church, June 5, 
1765. In 1778, after he left Nova Scotia he assumed the pastorate 
of the church at Manchester, Conn. This pastorate he resigned 
June 19, 1793, and it is believed he did not take another. He d. in 
Oxford Society, East Hartford, Conn., February 10, 1817, 
His father, Nathaniel Phelps, of Hebron, although 73 years 
old when the Revolutionary War broke out, served for 21 days on 
the Lexington Alarm. Later he enlisted as a sergeant of the 6th 
company, under Col. Huntington, but Dec. 21, 1776, he was dis- 
charged. 



THE PIERSON, PEARSON, OR PARSONS FAMILY 
Abijafai Pierson (Peter, Samuel, John), of Lyme, and Haddam, 
Conn., b. probably between 1726 and 1731, settled in Cornwallis, in 

1766. His father, Peter, m. 3 times, (1) Lydia , (2) Mary Low, 

(3) Martha, widow of Samuel Peck. Abijah, son of Peter by his 

2nd wife, m. (1) about 1754, Esther ; (2) Dec. 16, 1767, Abigail 

dau. of Solomon and Dinah Parish. He owned the place near Can- 
ning afterward owned by Ebenezer Rand, and d. there, March 23, 
1803. Children by 1st marriage : 

i Alice, b. July 22, 1755, in Lyme. 

ii Abigail, b. June 26, 1757, in Lyme. 

iii Abner, b. Oct. 23, 1759, in Lyme. 

iv Esther, b. May 31, 1761, in Haddam. 

V Abijah, b. June 13, 1763, in Haddam, m. March 2, 1803, 
Esther, dau. of Jethro and Dorothy Chase, and d, in 
Cornwallis, March 3, 1820. He had 6 children. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 777 

Children by 2nd marrriage : 

vi Jolin, b. Nov. 20, 17G8, in Horton, m. May 5, 1803, Abigail, 
dau. of Charles and Elizabeth Tupp.er, and had 11 
children recorded in Cornwallis. 
vii Rebecca, b. Sept. 29, 1774, in Horton. 
viii Samuel, b. Sept. 23, 1776, in Horton, m. July 14, 1803, 
Elizabeth, dau. of Abner Hall, and had 6 children. 
In the Upper Canard burying ground are the following inscrip- 
tions : 

Abijah, son of John Pierson, d. Feb, 2, 1829, aged 24 years. 
Farewell, dear friends, a short farewell 
Till we shall meet again above 
"Where endless joys and pleasures are, 
And trees of life have fruits of love. 

Abigail, consort of John Pearson, d. Nov. 16, 1826, aged 47. 
No weeping willow nor sad cypress gloom, 
Mantles with sombre shade our mother's tomb, 
But a rude stone with artless lines cut deep 
Points out the peaceful spot of her last sleep. 



THE PINEO FAMILY 

One of the few families in King's County, if not the only one, 
bearing a Huguenot name, is the Pineo family. About 1700, shortly 
after the Revolution of the Edict of Nantes, James Pineo, in a deed 
spelled "Pennau," came to Bristol, R. I., where May 9, 1706, he m, 

Dorothy B . In 1717 he removed to Lebanon, Conn., and there 

he spent the rest of his life and died. In Bristol he had five chil- 
dren born, in Lebanon four. His children were : Jmes, b. April 
19, 1707 ; Elizabeth, b. Feb. 22, 1709 ; James, b. 1709-10, m. Priscilla 
Newcomb ; Sarah, b. Dec. 19, 1712 ; Daniel, b. July 28, 1715 ; Submit, 
b. Oct. 19, 1717, m. in 1739, to Silas Newcomb; Joseph, b. June 14, 
1720; Peter, b. May 4, 1723; Dorothy, b. Dec. 6, 1725, m. to Capt. 
John Reed, of Taunton, Mass. Of these children, Peter Pinneo or 
Pineo, came to Cornwallis with his family and became the ancestor 
of the Pineos of King's Coimty. It would be interesting to know 
who his mother, Dorothy, was, but this has not yet been discovered. 
(See the Porter Genealogy (1878), pp. 197, 8.) 



778 KING'S COUNTY 

Peteri Pinneo or Pineo, b. in Lebanon, Conn., May 4, 1723, m. in 
Lebanon, Elizabeth, dau. of David and Mary (Chaffin) Sampson, 
bap. Aug. 30, 1730, and received a grant in Cornwallis. Elizabeth 
(Sampson) Pineo through her mother was descended from both 
Myles Standish and John Alden of the Mayflower, Peter and Eliza- 
beth had children: 

i David, m. Nov. 12, 1767, Rebecca, dau. of Capt, Stephen 
and Margery West. Children: Sarah, b. Sept. 3, 
1768; David Sampson, b. Oct. 13, 1770; Gibbs, b. 
May 12, 1773, m. Jan. 29, 1801, Charlotte, dau. of 
Ezekiel Comstock (and had children: Thomas 
Loomer, b. April 24, 1803; Charlotte, b. March 23, 
1804 ; Paulina, b. April 6, 1806 ; Jonathan, b. Sept. 5, 
1808); Esther, b. Sept. 12, 1775; Lavinia, b. June 2, 
1777; Elizabeth, b. Oct. 17, 1779; Jonathan, b. May 
4, 1782; Ruby, b. July 19, 1784; Elijah, b. July 19, 
1788, m. April 7, 1813, Elizabeth, dau. of Benjamin 
and Abigail Newcomb, b. Oct., 1787 (and had chil- 
dren : Eleanor, b. Aug. 28, 1814, m. May 2, 1832, to 
George Edward Newcomb; Rebecca, b. March, 1817; 
Elijah, b. March 18, 1819; Barnaby; David; Eliza- 
beth. The family of Elijah lived at Scots Bay). 

ii Peter, Jr., m. (1), May 14, 1772, Eunice, dau. of David 

and Ann Bentley, (2), probably Sarah . Peter 

and Eunice had children: Austin, b. Jan. 28, 1773; 
Job, b. Oct. 10, 1774; Betty, b. Oct. 29, 1776; Peter 
Bentley, m. April 2, 1802, Olive, dau. of Ezekiel and 
Phebe Comstock, and had children: Austin Pere- 
grine, b. July 9, 1803 ; Edward Henry, b. Feb. 22, 
1805 ; Phebe, b. May 17, 1807. 

iii Dan, m. (1), Oct. 21, 1773, Anne, dau. of David and 

Ann Bentley, (2), Kezia ^ . Children by 1st wife: 

Erastus, b. Sept. 3, 1774; Obadiah, b. Sept. 8, 1777. 
By 2nd wife : George D., b. May 29, 1785 ; Elizabeth, 
b. Oct. 29, 1786. 

iv William, m. July 18, 1776, Phebe, dau. of David and Ann 
Bentley. Children: James, b. Aug. 22, 1777; Au- 
gustine, b. July 13, 1779; Anne, b. Jan. 4, 1781; 
Lydia, b. Dec. 23, 1783; Olive, b. Dec. 23, 1785; 
Sally, b. Jan. 16, 1787; John (?), b. Jan. 23, 1789. 

V Rev. John, b. in 1753, m. Feb. 22, 1778, Hannah, dau. of 
Stephen and Hannah Loomer, and d. June 21, 1835. 
Children : Anne, b. Jan. 29, 1779 ; Luke, b. April 15, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 779 

1782 ; John, b. June 30, 1785, m. in 1809, Sarah 



Phebe, b. Jan. 3, 1788; Luke, m. May 6, 1806, Eliza- 
beth, dau. of John Miller. Rev. John Pineo was for 
about 28 years pastor of New Light Congregationalist 
Church of Cornwallis, to which he was ordained 
probably not very long after Mr. Manning withdrew, 
which was in 1807. He d. in 1835, aged 82. Two 
monographs on the Congregationalist Church of 
Cornwallis besides the account given in this book, 
are to be found in print, in both of which Mr. Pineo 's 
name occurs. These are an article by the present 
author, entitled ''The First Church Founded by New 
England People in King's County, N. S.," published 
in the N. E. Hist, and Cen. Register for 1892; and a 
pamphlet by Rev. Jacob W. Cox, entitled, "A His- 
tory of the Congregational Church of Cornwallis, 
N, S.," published in 1900. Both these monographs, 
together with a valuable one on ''Rev. William Som- 
merville, M. A., and Presbyterianism in Western 
Nova Scotia," by John E. Woodworth, Esq., editor of 
the Berwick Register, are bound together, and will 
be found in the library of the N. E. Hist. Gen. So- 
ciety, Boston. jx^vv-**'^ 

vi Erastus, m. Prudence . They had a dau. Eunice, k . 

Oct. 11, 1798, m. to Judah Eaton. p^^ ^sCoV^ 

vii Jonathan, it is said in the Porter Genealogy, probably liv- 
ing in Machias, Me., about 1774, 

viii Mary, b. Jan. 18, 1763, in Cornwallis. 

ix Ruby, b. Sept. 17, 1765, in Cornwallis, 

A George D. and Martha Pineo had children : Rebecca, b. March 
13, 1806; Eliza Kezia, b. Dec. 23, 1807; Martha Jane, b. Dec. 13, 
1809 ; Mary, b. May 2, 1811 ; Mary Ann, b. July 21, 1812 ; Eunice, 
b. Oct. 12, 1814 ; Prudence, b. Oct. 19, 1816 ; George Nesbit, b. July 
1, 1818 ; George Nesbit, b. May 30, 1819. 

An important representative of this family is Professor Albert J. 
Pineo, of Victoria, B. C, "master of science in Victoria College for 
16 years, and acting minister of the First Unitarian Church of Van- 
couver, B. C." Professor Pineo was b. in Medford, King's County, 
Nov. 13, 1855, and graduated at Acadia University in 1881. For 
some time before he left Nova Scotia he was editor of the Canadian 
Science Monthly. 



780 KING'S COUNTY 

THE PINGREE FAMILY 

Johni Pingree (Moses, Job, Aaron, Moses) of Boston, Mass., b. 
Jan. 22, 1759, m. (1) March 29, 1792, Persis Bodwell, of Methuen, 
(2), in 1794, Elizabeth, dan. of Lieut. Samuel Pickering, of Green- 
land, N. H. In 1802 he removed to Scots Bay, Cornwallis, where he 
d. Dec. 9, 1813, and was buried. Late in life his widow was m. to 
James Delap of Granville, Annapolis county. 

Children by 2nd marriage : 

i Persis, b. in 1795. 

ii Job, b. in 1797. 

iii Samuel Waite, b. April 20, 1798, m. May 10, 1832, Nancy, 
dau. of Alpheus Harris, of Cornwallis and Horton. 

iv Moses, b. in 1800, for a while taught school in Nova 
Scotia, then studied for the ministry of the English 
Church. He d. unm., March 10, 1834, and is buried 
at Upper Canard. 

V Frederick Major, b. Dec. 26, 1803, removed to St. Stephen, 
N. B., in 1835, and founded there the shipping and 
lumber firm of "Chipman and Pingree." He d. in 
Australia, July 3, 1870. 

vi Job, b. Dec. 8, 1805, m. Jan. 17, 1833, Martha Noble, dau. 
of John and Elizabeth (Graham) DeWolf, of Horton, 
b. April 22, 1810. Children: Ellen Lavinia, b. Oct. 
21, 1833, m. to John Leander Lockwood, and d. in 
Boston, Mass.; William John, b. Feb. 16, 1835, m. 
Oct. 12, 1865, Lucretia Howe, and has children : Rev, 
Arthur Howe, B. A., Harvard (Congregationalist), 
and Lillian DeWolf, m. to Arthur N. Broughton, 
M. D., of Boston; Charles DeWolf, b. Dec. 21, 1836; 
Henrietta, b. Dec. 18, 1838; Elizabeth, b. Nov. 14, 
1842 ; Laliah Burpee, b. Nov. 26, 1844 ; Frederick Jud- 
son; Delia Lydia. See "the DeWolfs" by Rev, Cal- 
braith Brown Perry, D. D., 1902. 

vii Elizabeth Pickering, b. Dec. 13, 1807. 

viii Ebenezer, b. in Dec, 1808. 

ix Mary Ann, b. Jan. 21, 1810. 



THE PORTER FAMILIES 

The founders of the Porter families in Cornwallis came from 
Connecticut, but their exact places in the Porter Genealogy cannot 
now be determined. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 781 

Simeon^ and Sarah Porter had children b. in Cornwallis : Simeon, 
b. Nov. 12, 1760; Eber, b. Aug. 9, 1762; Stephen, b. June 6, 1764; 

Ruby ; Sarah, b. Nov. 24, 1767; Simon, b. May 17, 1770; 

John, b. Feb. 15, 1773. 

Elishai and Miriam Porter had children: Mary, b. Jan. 8, 1761; 
Rhoda, b. Aug. 24, 1762 ; Samuel, b. July 24, 1765 ; Isaac, b. March 
13, 1768. 

Johni and Phebe Porter had children : Joel, b. Jan. 15, 1761 ; Han- 
nah, b. March 26, 1763 ; James, b. July 14, 1766 ; Edmund, b. May 
15, 1768. 

Israel^ and Elizabeth Porter had children: William, b. Jan. 17, 
1766 ; Elizabeth, b. Jan. 19, 1767 ; Amos, b. Sept. 13, 1768 ; William, 
b. June 12, 1771 ; Weighty, b. Nov. 22, 1773 ; John, b. April 21, 1779. 

Stephens Porter (Simeoni), b. June 6, 1764, m. Ruby . Chil- 
dren: Jeremiah, b. Sept. 30, 1786; Huldah, b. Feb. 25, 1788; Achsah 
b. Dec. 8, 1789; David, b. April 24, 1792; Hannah, b. Feb. 24, 1794; 
Zilpha, b. Feb. 24, 1796 ; Stephen, b. June 28, 1797 ; John Pingree, b. 
July 26, 1799 ; Ruby, b. March 12, 1802 ; Theodore Harding, b. April 
5, 1805 ; Zilpha, b. July 12, 1807 ; Kinsman, b. July 24, 1810. 

John2 Porter (Simeoni), b. Feb. 15, 1773, m. Dec. 18, 1794, ''Amy 
Minor of Horton." Children: Eunice, b. Sept. 22, 1795, m. to Wil- 
liam Roscoe; Simeon and Ebor, tvs^ins, b. Dec. 28, 1796; Anna, b. 
July 14, 1798; Daniel, b. Feb. 13, 1800; Charles, b. Jan. 27, 1802; 
Jerusha, b. Nov. 15, 1803 ; Lavinia, b. Aug. 30, 1805 ; Lydia, b. Oct. 
18, 1807 ; Prudence, b. Oct. 10, 1809. 

Amos2 Porter (Israel^), b. Sept. 13, 1768, m. Lydia . Children: 

Samuel, b. Aug. 26, 1791 ; James, b. Feb. 12, 1793 ; Hannah, b. Jan. 
4, 1795 ; Nathan, b. April 5, 1799 ; William, b. Feb. 6, 1802 ; Nelson, 
b. Dec. 6, 1803; Bejamin, b. Dec. 15, 1805; Elizabeth, b. Feb. 2, 
1808 ; Weighty, b. Oct. 14, 1809 ; Mary, b. Jan. 11, 1812 ; Charles, b. 
Feb. 22, 1814; Newton, b. Dec. 23, 1815. 



782 KING'S COUNTY 

Jeremiahs Porter (Stephen2 Simeoni), b. Sept. 30, 1786, m. Har- 
riet . Children: Theron, b. Oct. 22, 1812; Eliza Minetta, b. 

Feb., 13, 1814 ; Harriet Sophia, b. July 2, 1816 ; Kuth Ann, b. Nov. 
20, 1818; Aesah Ann, b. Nov. 14, 1820; Zilpha Ann, b. Dee. 1, 1821; 
Mary Alice, b. Dee. 28, 1823. 

Stephen^, Jr., Porter, (Steplien2, Simeoni), b. June 28, 1797, m. 

Ruth . Children : Ruth, b. Nov. 24, 1819 ; Eunice Malvina, b. 

Dec. 27, 1820; David, b. Oct. 13, 1822. 



THE POST FAMILY 
Stephen^ Post, the Cornwallis grantee, came probably directly 
from Saybrook, Conn., to Nova Scotia. He m. Eli^sabeth Clark, who 
d. in Saybrook, June 3, 1802. He d. in Cornwallis, March 29, 1767. 
His will was made in 1766, and is recorded in Windsor. Children : 
Sarah, b. in Saybrook, Aug. 17, 1741, m. in 1764, to Benjamin 
Belcher; Nancy, b. in Saybrook, in 1751, m. Dec. 14, 1775, as his 
2nd wife, to Handley Chipman; Jerusha, m. Sept. 22, 1769, to Dun- 
can Reid; Elizabeth, m. Oct. 6, 1783, to Joseph, son of Henry and 
Sarah Sibley. The Post family in the name, thus very soon became 
extinct in the county. 



THE POTTER FAMILY 

One of the early settlers of Halifax, like Messrs. Burbidge, 
Belcher, and Best, it is believed, an Englishman, was Henry Potter. 
At an early period, with his wife Martha, he moved to Cornwallis, 
near the Town Plot, and there spent the remainder of his days and 
died. He and his wife are both buried in the little burying ground 
at Starr's Point, where Samuel and David Starr, the founders of 
the two King's County families, lie. The mounds (without grave- 
stones) which indicate their graves, are beside those of David Starp 
and his wife, Susanna. There is no record of their having had other 
children than Susanna, born in Halifax, in April 1752, who became, 
August 5, 1770, the wife of David Starr. In Halifax, in July, 1752, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 783 

according to the Nova Scotia Archives, was "Edward" Potter, with 
a family of four persons (two besides the parents). It seems almost 
certain that this was not Edward, but Henry, and that it was he 
who settled in Cornwallis. When the Rev. Jacob Bailey removed 
from Cornwallis to Annapolis, he was accompanied much of the way 
by Mr. David Starr. In Aylesford the whole party spent one stormy 
night at the house of a Mr. Potter, "who had lately moved from 
Cornwallis," but we do not know who he was. 



THE PRESCOTT FAMILY 

Dr. Jonathan^ Prescott (Dr. Jonathan, John), b. at Littleton, 
Mass., May 24, 1725, m, (1) Mary, dau. of William Vassal, of Cam- 
bridge, Mass., who d. in 1757, (2) Ann Blackden, b, in London, 
Eng., March 21, 1742, d. at Halifax, N. S., in Feb., 1810. Dr. Pres- 
cott studied medicine and was both surgeon and captain of engi- 
neers at Louisburg, in 1745. After the capture of Louisburg he re- 
ceived land in Halifax, at Chester, and at Lunenburg, N. S. In all 
these places he was engaged in various business enterprises, at 
Chester and Lunenburg he built mills. He died at Chester, of 
cancer in the lip, Jan. 11, 1807, in his 82d year. He was buried at 
Chester, but his wife was buried in Halifax. 

Children by 1st marriage: 

i Jonathan, d. young. 

ii Mary, b. March 12, 1745, m. to John Hosmer, of Concord, 
Mass. 

Children by 2nd marriage : 

iii John, b. Nov. 20, 1760, m. at Halifax, Catharine Cleverley, 

(dau. of an Anglican clergyman), b. in 1776, d. in 

1868. He settled at Maroon Hall, Preston, Halifax 

county. His children were: Jonathan Prescott, who 

m. Sarah , but had no children known to us; 

Elizabeth Mott, Sarah Mott, m. to E. H. Howe, and 
Mott, John Prescott Mott, Charles Mott, Kate Mott, 
Elizabeth Mott, Sarah Mott, m. to R. H. Howe, and 
a dau. m. to Rev. Mr. Sutherland ; Charlotte ; Martha, 
m. to Lieut. Christian Conrad Casper Katzmann; 
Lydia, b. Oct. 8, 1797, m. as his 3rd wife, Nov. 13, 



784 KING'S COUNTY 

184—, to William DeWolf, b. Dec. 5, 1781; Ann, m. 
in 1816, to her 1st cousin, Hon. John Eleazer Fair- 
banks, M. L. a, June 27, 1793, son of Rufus and 
Ann (Prescott) Fairbanks, and was the mother of 
Katharine Prescott Fairbanks, b. Dec. 4, 1820, m. in 
Aug., 1846, to Judge James William Johnstone, 
Jr., of "Woodside," Dartmouth, N. S. 

iv Joseph, M. D., b. Jan. 6, 1762, m. in Cornwallis, Abigail, 
dau. of John and Elizabeth (Longfellow) Whidden, 
of Halifax, b. in Gorham, Me., and had a son, Wil- 
liam Eustace, bap. in St. John's Parish, Cornwallis, 
at 4 years old, Feb. 9, 1799. 

V Charlotte, b. Oct. 15, 1764, at Halifax, m. to George Boyle. 

vi Ann, b. Oct. 12, 1766, at Halifax, m. Nov. 17, 1785, to 
Rufus Fairbanks, of Halifax, b. in Killingly, Conn., 
Oct. 20, 1759, grad. Dartmouth College, in 1784. She 
d. Sept. 1, 1850. 

vii Elizabeth, b. April 12, 1769, at Chester, m. April 12, 1792, 
to Asael, son of Capt. Judah and Ann (Bigelow) 
Wells, b. Aug. 20, 1764, brother of John Wells, 
M. P. P., who m. Prudence Eaton, and of Eunice 
Wells, m. to David, Jr. Eaton. Elizabeth (Prescott) 
Wells had 3 daus. and 1 son. She d. June 3, 1800, 
and is buried at Upper Canard. 

viii Samuel Thomas, b. April 7, 1770, at Chester, m. June 18, 
1801, Ann Hosterman, of Halifax. 

ix Hon. Charles Ramage, b. Jan. 6, 1772, at Halifax, m. (1) 
Hannah Whidden, (2) Maria Hammell. See Personal 
Sketches. 

X Lydia, b. May 12, 1775, at Lunenburg, m. May 12, 1775, to 
the Rev. Robert Norris, Rector of St. John's, Corn- 
wallis. 

xi Susannah, b. Dec. 11, 1776, at Lunenburg, d. young. 

xii Benjamin, b. Oct. 6, 1778, at Chester, d. young. 

In this connection the Katzmann family of Halifax county demands 
notice. Lieut. Christian Conrad Casper Katzmann, b. in Eimbeck, 
Hanover, Prussia, Aug. 18, 1780, came to Annapolis Royal, N. S., 
as ensign (he is also called adjutant, 3rd Battalion) of H. M. 60th 
Regt. He m. (1) in Annapolis Royal (by Rev. John Millidge), June 
11, 1818, Eliza Georgina Fraser (who had a sister, Mrs. Robinson, and 
a brother, James Fraser, Jr., Postmaster at Augusta, Georgia), who 
d. shortly before April 5, 1819. He m. (2), April 6, 1822, by Bishop 



FAMILY SKETCHES 785 

Ingrlis, Martlia, dan. of John and Catharine (Cleverley) Prescott, of 
Maroon Hall, Preston, Halifax county, and retiring from the army, 
bought Maroon Hall. His children by his 2nd marriage were : 
Martha Elizabeth, b. April, 2,1823, m. to George Elkana Morton ; Mary 
Jane (the authoress), b. Jan. 15, 1828, m. to William Lawson, of 
Halifax; Anna Prescott, b. Sept. 25, 1832, d. unm.. May 31, 1876. 
Lieut. Katzmann and his family are buried in Dartmouth, N. S. 
Mv. and Mrs. John Prescott are probably buried at Preston. 

Hon. Charles Ramage^ Prescott, M. L. C, (Jonathan^, M. D ), b. in 
Halifax, Jan. 6, 1772, m. (1) in Cornwallis, Feb. 6, 1796, Hannah, 
dau. of John and Elizabeth (Longfellow) Whidden, who d. Jan. 
15, 1813, aged 37 ; (2) in Halifax, Feb. 9, 1814, Maria Hammill. He 
d. June 11, 1859. His widow d. in Oct., 1866, within a few weeks 
of 90 years of age." 

Children by 1st marriage : 

i Ann Elizabeth, b. March 10, 1797, m. (1) June 4, 1816, to 

Richard O'Brien, Surgeon, R. N. ; (2) to her cousin, 

Hon. Joseph Allison, 
ii Clharles, b. Dec. 31, 1798, d. Aprl 24, 1818, on a passage to 

Bordeaux. 
iii John, b. Sept. 7, 1800, d. young, 
iv John, b. May 8, 1802, d. Oct. 12, 1838. 
V Mary, b. July 19, 1806, d. perhaps May 8, 1822. 
vi Maria, b. April 17, 1808, m. Jun 14, 1828, to Thomas 

Ritchie Grassie. 
vii Catharine, b. Feb. 24, 1811, m. May 1, 1839, to James 

DeWolf Eraser, of Windsor, N. S. 
(These children were all bap. in St. Matthew's Parish, Halifax). 

Children by 2nd marriage: 

viii James Robert, b. Dec. 2, 1814. He was a barrister, lived 

for many years in Kentville, and d. probably aged 

between 60 and 70, unm. 
ix Martha Margaret, b. Aug. 27, 1816, m. in 1842, to George 

Augustus Allison. See Allison Family. 
X Charles, b. March 9, 1819, d. two days later. 
xi Charles Thomas, b. Oct. 21, 1820, m. Matilda Elizabeth, 

dau. of J. W. Madden, of Halifax, 
xii Maria, b. April 15, 1823, d. Feb. 11, 1837. 



786 KING'S COUNTY 

THE PRYOR FAMILY 

The Pryor family of Halifax, one of the most aristrocratic of the 
Halifax families, was founded in that city by Edward Pryor, a New 
York merchant, b. in New York, Sept. 12, 1745, m. there April 13, 
1767, Jane Vermilye, and at the close of the Revolutionary War, per- 
haps in 1783, as a Loyalist, settled in Halifax. In the Nova Scotia 
capital he renewed business, owning the wharf on Lower Water 
street where afterwards was located the shipping business of Wil- 
liam Pryor and Sons. At the head of this wharf, now "Dominion 
Wharf," was his dwelling house, and this later became the counting 
house of the Pryor firm. He d. March 16, 1831. His children, b. in 
New York, were: Edward, b. in 1768, m. Abigail Stevens; John, b. 
Oct. 9, 1769, m. Sarah Stevens (sister of Abigail) ; Jane, m. to 

Samuel Marshall ; Rebecca, m. to Yeomans ; William, b. Jan. 3, 

1775, m. Mary Barbara Voss. His children b. in Halifax were: 
Matthew, bap. June 13, 1783 ; Catherine, probably m. June 8, 1813, 
to Alexander McLean. 

John2 Pryor (Edward^), b. in New York, Oct. 9, 1769, m. in Hali- 
fax, March 29, 1769, Sarah, youngest dau. of Thomas and Bowvina 
(Fondesbelt) Stevens, b. in Halifax, Dec. 23, 1777, who was buried 
in Halifax, Oct. 12, 1819. He d. Dec. 7, and was buried Dec. 10, 
1820, aged 51. Mr. Pryor is said to have left his children at his 
death some ten or fifteen thousand pounds apiece. His children 
were : Marianne, bap. June 4, 1797, m. Feb. 21, 1817, to Lewis John- 
stone, M. D. ; Rebecca, m. to James Tremaine ; Jane Vermilye, bap. 
Jan. 19, 1802, m. (1) to William Minet De Blois, (2) to George W. 
Daniel, of Neva, W. I.; Edward, bap. Dec. 15, 1803; Rev. John, 
D. D., b. July 4, bap. Aug. 14, 1805 ; Sophia, bap. March 6, 1807, m. 
to Hon. Mather Byles Almon; Henry, Q. C., D. C. L., b. July 3, 

1808, m. (1) Eliza Phebe Pyke, (2) Charlotte ; Louisa, bap. 

Dec. 24, 1809, m. (1) to Capt. Samuel Henry Wentworth, of the 
British Army, (2) as his 2nd wife, to Hon. Judge James William 
Johnstone; Harriet, bap. Oct. 11, 1811; Emma, bap. (1 mo. old), 
June 5, 1814, m. to Lawrence Davidson, W. S., of Edinburgh, G. B. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 787 

To the historic secession from St. Paul's Church, Halifax, to the 
Baptist denomination, in 1826, King's County owes more perhaps 
than any other county in the Province, Acadia College at Wolfville, 
at first Queen's, was largely created by these former Churchmen, 
and for many years the Baptist pulpits in Cornwallis and Horton 
were often filled by them, and Baptist gatherings were dignified 
by their presence. To this secession from St. Paul's is due the 
presence for many years in the county of the Rev. John Pryor, 
D. D., (John^, Edward^), a sketch of whom will be found in the Per- 
sonal Sketches in this book. The Rev. Dr. Pryor was b. in Halifax, 
July 4, and bap. in St. Paul's parish, Aug. 14, 1805. He graduated 
at King 's College, Windsor, in 1824, and m. in 1827, Elizabeth Mary, 
dau. of Thomas and Sarah (De Blois) Boggs, b. July 4, 1805, bap. 
Sept. 7, 1806, d. March 19, 1889. Dr. Pryor himself d. Aug. 17, 
1892, and both he and his wife are buried at Camp Hill cemetery, 
Halifax. His children were : John Edward, b. in 1827, studied medi- 
cine at Harvard University, and d. in Boston, Dec. 12, 1846, aged 
19; Louise, d. unm., June 7, 1854; Anna, m. to James DeMille, the 
novelist; Thomas Henry, M. D., grad. B. A. at Harvard in 1859, 
M. D., in 1862. He d. in the U. S. in 1888. 



THE PUDSEY FAMILY 

Hugh Pudsey, an Englishman, came to Horton and married there 
Roxalena, b. Jan, 23, 1757, dau. of Benjamin and Mary (Elderkin) 
Cleveland, a sister of Olive Cleveland who was m, to Cornelius Fox, 
and Mary Cleveland, who was m. to George Johnson. ''He was," 
says the Cleveland Genealogy, ''intellectual and scientific, and had 
a choice library." He d. about 1825. His wife d. in Oct., 1834. 
They had children : Hugh, m. (1) Sarah Caldwell, (2) Mary A. Cald- 
well; Elizabeth, m. to Joseph, son of John and Deborah (Eaton) 
Manning, of Falmouth; Olive, m. to John William Taylor, an Eng- 
lishman; Eunice, m. to John Coldwell. 



788 KING'S COUNTY 

THE PYKE FAMILY 

The Pyke family in King's County is descended from Jolin Pyke, 
who came to Halifax with Governor Cornwallis in 1749, it is said 
as his private secretary, and was killed by Indians in Dartmouth, in 
August of the next year. His wife was Anne Scroope, b. in 1716, her 
grandfather or his brother, it is believed, being a baronet in Lin- 
colnshire. Precisely how long before he came to Halifax John Pyke 
married, it is impossible to say, but his son (and only child, so far 
as is known), John George, was born in England in 1743. After 
her first husband's death, Anne (Scroope) Pyke was married to 
Richard Wenman, another of the company that came with the Corn- 
wallis fleet, and to her second husband she bore three daughters: 
Susanna, married to Hon. Benjamin Green, Treasurer of the 
Province; a daughter m. to Captain Howe, of the Army; another 
daughter m. to Captain Pringle of the army. Mrs. Anne "Wenman 
died May 21, 1792 ; her husband, Richard Wenman, was buried Sept. 
30, 1781. 

John George^ Pyke, b. in England in 1743, m. in Halifax, Aug. 27, 
1772, Elizabeth, dau. of William and Isabella (Maxwell) Allan, b. 
in Halifax, Dec. 25, 1750, her brother being the noted Col. John 
Allan, who in the Revolutionary War actively sympathized with the 
revolting colonies and did much to stir up seditious feeling in Cum- 
berland county, in Nova Scotia, where until that time he had lived. 
A sister, Jane Allan, of Mrs. Pyke, was m. as his second wife, to 
Hon. Thomas Cochran, of Halifax, and a sister, Isabella, to Hon. 
Charles Hill. John George Pyke d. Sept. 3, 1828, in his 85th year ; 
a biographical sketch of him in the Nova Scotian newspaper of 
Sept. 4, of that year, speaks of him as having resided in Halifax for 
79 years and as being the oldest Custos Rotulorum there. His chil- 
dren were: Anne, bap. Oct. 31, 1773, m. to Hon. James Irvine, of 
Quebec ; George, bap. March 5, 1775, a Judge of the Supreme Court 
in Quebec (father of the first Mrs. Henry Pryor, of Halifax) ;William, 
bap. June 2, 1776, d. young; John Wenman, b. March 10, 1779, bap. 
Arpil 7, 1779, m. Ann Jane Lloyd; Isabella, bap, July 21, 1782, d. 
young; Elizabeth, bap. May 11, 1783, d. unm. ; Mary b. Jan. 22, bap 



FAMILY SKETCHES 789 

Feb. 12, 1786, m. to Benjamin Tremain of Quebec; Isabella, b. Oct. 

10, bap. Nov. 6, 1787, m. to George N. Russell; William, b. April 

11, bap. May 10, 1789, d. young; Winckworth Allan, b. April 20, 
bap. May 15, 1791, Lieut, in a Fusilier Regt., killed at the storming 
of San Sebastian, in Spain ; Edward, bap. Nov. 5, 1794, d. unm., July 
19, 1828. (There was also a Richard, who d. young; and a Thomas, 
who m. a daughter of J. H. Fleiger.) 

Of these children of John George and Elizabeth (Allan) Pyke, 
John Wenman, b. March 10, 1779, bap. April 7, 1779 m. May 16, 
1807, Anne Jane Lloyd, b. at Portsmouth, England, Oct. 23, 1783. 
Children : 

i John George, b. Feb. 22, 1808. 

ii Eleanor Mary, b. Feb. 23, 1810. , 

iii Jane Isabella, b. May 17, 1811, d. unm., in Kentville, at an 
advanced age. 

iv Elizabeth Anne, b. Feb. 25, 1813. 

V Catharine Taylor, b. March 16, 1815, d. unm. in Kentville, 
at an advanced age. 

vi Edward Allan, b. Dec. 18, 1816, m. Augusta Ann Maura, 
of Nassau, New Providence, Bahamas. He was ad- 
mitted to the Nova Scota bar, but preferring the life 
of a gentleman farmer, soon after his marriage came 
to Cornwallis, where he spent the rest of his life and 
died. Children: Charles Maura; Frank; Florence; 
Elizabeth ; Edward Allan, Jr. ; Ada Eugenia ; John 
George; Helen Louise; Isabella; Irvine Wenman. 

vii Robert James, b. Nov. 12, 1819, m, in Nassau, Anne Vic- 
toria Maura. Children: John George, Barrister, of 
Liverpool, N. S. ; Robert James, d. unm.; Clarence 
Arthur, d. young; Amelia Josepha Anne. 

viii Anne Irvine, b. July 26, 1821, m. to Joseph Maura, of 
Nassau. 



RAND FAMILIES 

Among the most important early settlers at Charlestown, Mass., 
were Robert Rand and his wife Alice. A great grandson of Robert 
and Alice, Caleb, son of John and Mehitable (Call) Rand, m. Aug. 
4, 1726, Katherine, dau. of Jonathan and Katherine (Waters) Ket- 
tell, and removed to Nantucket, where, and in Martha's Vineyard, 



790 KING'S COUNTY 

he owned property. He d. in Nantucket, about 1768. His children 
were: Katherine; Mehitable, d. young; Caleb, b. Jan. 10, 1730; 
Benjamin; Thomas, b. Feb. 14, 1734; John, b. Aug. 25, 1736; Jona- 
than, b. Feb. 12, 1731; Mehitable, m. June 11, 1772, to Joshua, Jr., 
son of Joshua and Mary Ells. 

Of the sons of Caleb and Katherine (Kettell) Rand, Caleb, b. in 
Charlestown, John, b. in Nantucket, and Jonathan, b. in Tisbury, 
Martha's Vineyard, became grantees in Cornwallis. 

Calebi Rand, b. Jan. 10, m. Mary Mayhew, b. in Martha's Vine- 
yard, and d. in Cornwallis before 1780. His widow was m. (2) as 
his third wife, to Thomas Woodworth. Children : 

i Mayhew, b. in 1753, m. in Cornwallis, May 16, 1786, Eliza- 
beth, dau. of Samuel J. and Rebecca (Chipman) 
Beckwith, b. July 19, 1770, d. Oct. 31, 1817. He d. 
May 25, 1837. Children: Rebecca, b. Jan. 6, 1787, 
m. to Silas Woodworth Masters; Mary, b. Aug. 18, 
1788, m. Dec. 3, 1806, to Thomas Fuller ; Caleb Hand- 
ley, merchant of Kentville, b. Aug. 27, 1790, m. Re- 
becca Allison, and d. in 1878; Samuel William, b. 
April 3, 1797, m. (1) , (2) Mrs. Rebecca (New- 
comb) Crocker; Eunice, m. March 21, 1829, to May- 
hew Beckwith. 

ii Katherine, b. in 1755, m. April 6, 1774, to Joseph, son of 
John and Mercy (Barnaby) Newcomb, b. July 8, 
1751. 

iii Lydia, m. April 25, 1779, to Greene Randall, of Horton. 

iv Ruth, m. before 1780, to Cyprian Fitch. 

V Mary, m. June 18, 1788, to Asael Bill. 

vi Mehitable, b. March 14, 1763, in Cornwallis, m. as his 2nd 
wife, Oct. 13, 1782, to Robert, son of Benjamin and 
Elizabeth Kinsman. 

vii Caleb, b. Oct. 22, 1764, m. (1) , (2) July 29, 1801, by 

license in St. Paul's Parish, Halifax, Susanna King, 
spinster. 

viii Elizabeth, b. Oct. 8, 1766, m. May 2, 1785, to Elijah Eaton. 

ix Ebenezer, b. April 11, 1768, lived in Kentville. 

X Rebecca, b. Feb. 28, 1770, m. Sept. 26, 1790, to John Cal- 
houn, b. in Hopewell, N. B. 

xi Sarah, m. (1) as his 2nd wife, to Samuel Beckwith, Jr., 
(2) Dec. 17, 1807, as his 2nd wife, to Timothy Eaton. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 791 

Thomasi Rand, b. Feb. 14, 1734, m. Mary Marchant, b. in Martha's 
Vineyard, and d. in Cornwallis in 1788. His wife d. in 1789. 
Children : 

i Thomas, b. Oct. 5, 1759, in Nantucket, m. March 31, 1790, 
Sarah, dau. of Moses Gore, Jr., b. in Cornwallis, April 
5, 1770. 

ii John, b. July 14, 1762, in Cornwallis, m. Dee. 16, 1790, 
Elizabeth Hoben, 

iii Marchant, b. May 19, 1765, m. (1) April 3, 1788, Hannah 
Chase, b. April 6, 1769, (2) Sept. 30, 1802, Zerviah, 
dau. of Stephen and Elizabeth (Woodworth) Eaton, 
By his 2nd wife he had a son, Thomas Woodworth, b. 
Oct. 18, 1805, m. July 8, 1828, Eliza Irene Barnaby, 
b. Oct. 8, 1808, and had among other children well 
known, George Valentine Rand, b. Feb. 20, 1829, for 
many years Postmaster at Wolfville, and Theodore 
Harding Rand, D. C. L., b. Feb. 8, 1835, whose name 
elsewhere appears in this book. 

iv Elijah, b. Nov. 15, 1766, d. unm. 

V Silas, b. Aug. 18, 1768, m. (1) March 6, 1794, Amy Tupper, 

(2) April 5, 1802, Deborah Tupper, (3) Dec. 24, 
1812, Eunice Schofield, and had among others, the 
Rev. Silas Tertius Rand, D. D. See Personal Sketches. 

vi Asa, b. May 21, 1770, d. unm. 

vii Martha, b. Oct. 17, 1772, m. Oct. 27, 1800, to Wm. Rob- 
inson. 

viii Love, b. Feb. 26, 1775, m. Aug. 21, 1803, to Francis Rob- 
inson (brother of William). 

ix William, b. Aug. 24, 1777, m. April 20, 1803, Mary 
Bigelow. 

Johni Rand, b. Aug. 25, 1736, m. Dec. 12, 1765, Katherine Athearn, 

b. in Tisbury, Sept. 10, 1739. He d. in 1812. Children: 

i Tabitha, m. May 29, 1794, as his 1st wife, to John Eaton, 
ii John, Jr., b. Oct. 21, 1768, in Cornwallis, m. Margaret Mc- 

Kenzie. 
iii Katherine, b. Sept. 3, 1770, m. Sept. 12, 1787, to Stephen 

Loomer. 
iv Nancy Ann, b. Oct. 1, 1772, m. April 28, 1803, to Ebenezer 

Bigelow, b. in 1773. 

V Abigail, b. Sept. 30, 1774, m. Jan. 28, 1808, as his 2nd wife, 

to John Eaton, 
vi Margaret, b. Oct. 6, 1778, m. in Aug. 21, 1804, to William 
Borden, b. in 1776. 



792 KING'S COUNTY 

vii Mary, b. Oct. 7, 1781, m. as his 2nd wife, Jan. 4, 1821, to 

Benjamin Weaver, 
viii Benjamin, b. Feb. 2, 1784, m. March 22, 1810, Sarah Bige- 

low, and had children : Lavinia ; Ruby ; Sarah ; John ; 

Abigail. 

Jonathani Rand, b. Feb. 12, 1739, m. Nov. 12, 1766, in Cornwams, 
Lydia Strong, b. in Coventry, Conn., April 24, 1748. Children: 

i Jonathan, b. Sept. 8, 1767, m. Sept. 22, 1803, Elizabeth 
Sweet, b. in 1780. He had a son, Jonathan, b. 
July 5, 1818, m (1) Clara Parker, (2) Mrs. Rebecca 
(McLatchy) Hardwick, and had children: Ellen 
Ernest; Mary; Robert. He was long a prominent 
man in the county. 

ii Eunice, b. Aug. 14, 1769, m. June 4, 1787, to Abel Ben- 
jamin. 

iii Nathan, b. Nov. 23, 1771, d. unm. 

iv Job, b. March 26, 1774. 

V Michael, b. Jan. 29, 1776, m. Oct., 1805, Lucy Payzant, b. 
Oct. 8, 1780. 

vi David, b. March 2, 1778, m. Whipple. 

vii Stephen Strong, b. April 1, 1779, m. Nov. 21, 1804, Nancy 
Forsyth, b. Dec, 1779, and had among other chil- 
dren, Leander Rand, M. P. P., b. Oct. 7, 182—, m. 
March 19, 1851, Olivia Ann Borden, b. Nov. 17, 1827, 
and had children : Stephen ; Maria Frances m. to Wil- 
liam Young, formerly of Halifax, nephew and heir 
of the Hon. Chief Justice, Sir William Young, Kt. ; 
Nancy Elizabeth; Harry; Frank; William; Harry; 
Margaret; Rebecca; Clara Amelia. Leander Rand 
was long one of the most important men of King's 
County. In general agriculture, in fruit raising, and in 
politics, his influence was strongly felt. 

viii Huldah, b. Feb. 1, 1781. 

ix Peter, b. Feb. 18, 1783, m. June 27, 1812, Susannah, dau. 
of Elijah and Elizabeth (Rand) Eaton. 

X Lydia, b. June 13, 1785, m. April, 1802, to Caleb Newcomb, 
b. March 27, 1777. 

xi Jane, b. Oct. 20, 1787, m. Feb. 22, 1810, to Caleb, son of 
Elijah and Elizabeth (Rand) Eaton. 

xii Olive, b. Feb. 21, 1790. 

xiii Levi, b. June 8, 1792, m. Phebe Lounsbury. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 793 

John2, Jr., Rand (Johni) b. Oct. 21, 1768, m. Sept. 17, 1805, Mar- 
garet McKenzie, of a Scottish family settled in Cornwallis, b. in 
1786. Children: 

i Katherine, b. June 12, 1807, m. to Thomas Buckley. 

ii James Edward, b. Feb. 2, 1810, m. Sarah Keed, and was 
the father of Henry Walter Rand, M. D., late of 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 

iii Margaret, b. May 6, 1812. 

iv Isabella, b. Dec. 3, 1814. 

V Nancy Caroline, b. May 27, 1817. 

vi Ebenezer, b. Jan. 29, 1820, m. Oct. 25, 1852, Ann Isabella 
Eaton, eldest dau. of Ward and Deborah (Eaton) 
Eaton, b. Aug. 30, 1820. Children : Laura Francesca, 
m. to Noble Crandall; Florence; Benjamin, Ph. D., of 
Harvard University; William Fenwick Williams, m. 
Anna Rockwell; Frederic Clarence, successor of his 
father in the Chief Collectorship of Customs for 
King's County, m. Mary H. Locke, and has one dau., 
Ida. See Eaton Family. 

vii Henry, 

viii Benjamin, a student at Acadia College, drowned in Minas 
Basin, June 7, 1852. 

Among the descendants of the three Rand brothers who came to 
Cornwallis, there are many persons of influence living in Canada 
and in the United States. Among the most prominent members who 
have died are the late Rev. Dr. Silas Tertius Rand, Theodore Hard- 
ing Rand, D. C. L., Henry Walter Rand, M. D., of Brooklyn, N. Y., 
and Leander Rand, M. P. P., and his son, Stephen Rand, barrister of 
St. John, N. B. The last named was educated first at Acadia Col- 
lege, and then at the Boston University Law School, and after ad- 
mission to the New Brunswick Bar, about 1875, settled in St. John. 



THE RANDALL FAMILY 

There were three Randall grantees in Horton : Anna, Charles and 
John. The first of these, Annai Randall, originally Anna 
Gates, was m. (1) to Amos Rathbone, (2) to Ichabod Randall, Jr., 
eldest son of Ichabod, Sr., and his wife (who was his 1st cousin), 



794 KING'S COUNTY 

Humility (Greene) Eandall. Anne's second husband d. in 1757, and 
in 1760 or '61 she removed with her four Rathbone children to Hor- 
ton, where she received 500 acres of land. The complete list of chil- 
dren of Ichabod, Sr., and Humility (Greene) Randall, was: Ichabod, 
Jr.; Charles; Benjamin; Greene; Humility; John. With their sister- 
in-law, Anna (Gates) Randall, and her children, came Anna's late 
husband's brothers, Charles and John, who also received 
grants of land. 

At the same time, or a little later, came Greene^ Randall, 
above, b. in Colchester, Conn., about 1742, who m. April 25, 1779, 
Lydia, dau. of Caleb and Mary (Mayhew) Rand, and d. at Cuba, 
Havana, Sept. 4, 1762. Children: 

i James. 

ii Samuel. 

iii Charles, m. Sarah, dau. of David and Milcah (Palmer) 
Denison, and d. at Wolfville in 1856, They had an 
only child, Charles, Jr., b. in 1816, who studied at 
Acadia and Brown Universities, was at one time 
Principal of Horton Academy, for five years was con- 
nected with the N. S. Provincial Normal School, and 
was otherwise prominent in education. He m. (1) 
Mrs. Anne Ratchford (DeWolf) Woodward, dau. of 
Judge Elisha DeWolf and widow of Thomas Wood- 
ward, and had one son, who d. in infancy. He m. (2) 
in 1845, Nancy Cogswell Bill, eldest dau. of Caleb 
Rand Bill, Esq., of Billtown. Children: Sarah Re- 
becca Cogswell, m. as his 1st wife to Rev. Maynard 
Parker Freeman (who m. 2nd, May, dau. of Stephen 
Selden of Halifax) ; Elizabeth Mary Pryor, m. to Ed- 
mund J. Cogswell; Charles Melbourne, d. young; 
Anna Bill, unm. ; Eardley Wilmot, unm. 

iv Nathaniel. 

V Arunah. 

vi Mary. 

vii Rebecca. 

Still another Randall settler in King's county, though apparently 
without a government grant, was David^ Randall (Stephen), 
b. in Stonington, Conn., May 4, 1719, m. at Preston, Conn., Nov. 6, 
1739, Kezia Davidson. Children: 



FAMILY SKETCHES 795 

i Nathan, b. May 27, 1741, d. young. 

ii Kezia, b. March 4, 1743. 

iii Lucy, b. Feb. 4, 1744. 

iv Sarah, b. Jan. 2, 1746, m. to John Newcomb. 

V David, b. Jan. 17, 1748, m. Nov. 23, 1775, Amy Payson, 
and settled in Aylesford. He d, in 1831. She d. in 
1830, aged 78. Their children were: John, b. Sept. 
10, 1777, m. (1) Ruth Gates, (2) Nancy Downey, (3) 
Polly (Baker) Goucher; Lucy, b. July 28, 1780, d. 
young; Jonathan, b. Aug. 15, 1781, m. and lived in 
Maine ; William D., b. Oct. 16, 1783 ; George, b. Aug. 
28, 1785, d. about 1816 ; Lucy, b. Nov. 19, 1787, m. to 
Peter P. Chute; Amy, b. Sept. 15, 1789, m. to Rev. 
Ebenezer Strouach; Eunice, b. Aug, 8, 1794; Olive, b. 
April 27, 1797, d. Nov. 13, 1798. 

vi Jonathan, b. April 2, 1751, m. Dec. 29, 1784, Olive, dau. of 
Dr. Samuel and Alice (English) Willoughby. 

vii Samuel, b. Sept. 10, 1753, m. in 1783, Sarah Ann, dau. of 
Col. Benjamin Prince and lived in Aylesford. He d. 
in 1847. She d. in 1834. Children: Elizabeth, b. 
July 12, 1784, m. to Samuel Chute, Jr.; Mary, b. in 
1786, m. to Benjamin Foster, Jr.; Job, b. in 1788, m. 
(1) Cynthia Foster, (2) Mary, dau. of Wm. Parker; 
Paoli, d. July 11, 1791; Sarah, b. in 1794, m. (1) to 
Cyrus Dodge, (2) to Henry Magee; Naomi, b. in 1796, 
m. to Rev. Clark Alline; Robert, b. Oct. 28, 1798, m. 
in 1832, Hannah (Hall) Delap; Ruth, b. in 1800, m. 
(1) to William Steves, (2) to Israel Steves; Marie, 
b. in 1803, d. young ; Christopher, b. in 1805. 

viii Amos, b. Dec. 30, 1755, m. Susan Chute. 

ix Hezekiah, b. Jan. 28, 1758. 

X Elisha, b. 1760, m. Mary . 

xi John, b. 1762, d. young. 

xii Nathan, b. May 7, 1764. See for this important family, His- 
tory of Stonington, Conn., Chute Genealogies, History 
of Annapolis, etc., etc. A thorough history of the 
Randall family is in course of preparation by an ac- 
complished genealogist in Boston, Mr. Aaron Ferre 
Randall. 



THE RATOHFORD FAMILY 

James Ratchford or Radsford, a settler in East Bridgewater, 
Mass., of whose origin we know nothing, m. in East Bridgewater in 



796 KING'S COUNTY 

1738, Margaret Balls, and had sons: James, b. in 1739; Thomas, b. 
June 19, 1741; William, b. in 1748; John, b. in 1750; Walter, b. in 
1752. Of these sons Thomasi Ratchford m. Dec. 1, 1760, De- 
sire, dan. of Moses and Desire (Burris) Gore, b. in Groton, Conn., 
Sept. 20, 1740, and settled in Cornwallis. He d. in Horton, Dec, 27, 
1813. His wife d. there, April 12, 1813. Children : 

i Margaret, b. Sept. 3, 1762, in Cornwallis, m. Sept, 1, 1779, 
to Judge Elisha DeWolf, b. May 5, 1756, and had 13 
children. 

ii James, b. Dec. 5, 1763, m. Sept. 9, 1790, Mary, dau. of 
Silas and Mary Crane, of Parrsborough, b. in Briar 
Island, April 17, 1772. Children : Margaret ; Thomas, 
m. Caroline Sophia DeWolf; James; Nancy, m. to 
her cousin, Thomas Andrew Strange DeWolf; Mary 
Sophia, m. as his 1st wife to Hon. John Leander 
Starr, M. L. C. ; John William ; Charles Edward. 

Thomas^ Ratchford (James^, Thomas^) m. March 26, 1818, Caro- 
line Sophia, dau. of Daniel DeWolf, M. P. P., and his wife Lydia 
Kirtland (Harris), b. Aug. 13, 1798, d. July 2, 1823. He d. Jan. 16, 
1824. Children: 

i Margaret Caroline Sophia, b. Dec. 6, 1818, d. young, 
ii Sarah Jane, b. Nov. 19, 1820, d. young, 
iii Thomas, Jr., b. Oct. 8, 1822, d. young. 

In the sale of lands of Nathan Longfellow, in Cornwallis, to 
Thomas Ratchford, in 1782, Mr. Ratchford is spoken of as "formerly 
of Norwich, in the Colony of Connecticut." In the chapter in this 
book on the Township of Parrsborough, further notice of the Ratch- 
ford family will be found. 



THE RATHBONE OR RATHBUN PAMILy 

Amos Rathbone, 1st, (Joshua, John, John), of Salem, Conn., m. 
Anna Gates. Children: John, d. in 1827, s. p.; Amos, b. Jan. 25, 
1738, m. Humility Randall ; Anna, b. in 1744, m. in Colchester, Conn., 
in 1762, to James Harris, son of Jonathan and Rachel (Otis) Harris, 
b. in Colchester, Dec. 13, 1740 ; Abel, b. in Hartford, Conn., Nov. 6, 
1746, m. June 21, 1772, Anna Gates, b. May 6, 1755. After the death 



FAMILY SKETCHES 797 

of Amos Rathbonc, 1st, his widow, Anna (Gates) was m. (2) to 
Ichabod Randall, Jr., who d. in Conn., in 1857. It was Ichabod's only- 
sister, Humility Randall, who became the wife of Amos Rathbun, 
the Horton grantee. 

Amosi Rathbone, 2nd (Amos, 1st), the Horton grantee, b. in Salem, 
Conn., Jan. 25, 1738, m. Humility Randall, dau. of Ichabod, Sr., and 
Humility (Greene) Randall, of Colchester, Conn, He d. in 1816. 
His wife d. in 1808. Children : 

i Amos, 3rd, b. July 9, 1761. 

ii Mary Faulkner. 

iii Anna, b. Jan. 1, 1764, m. Dec. 12, 1782, to William Allison, 
and d. July 7, 1792. (The Allison Genealogy calls her 
Humility Rathbun). William Allison m. (2) Mrs. 
Eliphal Lee. William Allison (probably by his 1st. 
wife) had children: Elizabeth, m. to Rev. William 
Bennett, Wesleyan minister ; William, Jr. ; Amos, d. 
young ; Nancy, m. to James Noble Shannon, of Hali- 
fax. 

iv Roswell, b, Jan. 20, 1767, m. Charity Reed. 

V Arunah, b. April 15, 1770, m. Elizabeth Crane. 

vi Lavinia, b. March 5, 1773, m. to Silas Crane. 

vii Charles, b. Oct. 7, 1775, m. Sarah Allison, and had 7 
children. 

viii Daniel, b. Feb. 21, 1781, m. Sarah Ingles (probably 
Inglis, and dau. of Rev. Archibald Peane or Paine 
Inglis. They probably lived in Lower Horton.) 

ix James, b. Oct. 16, 1783, m. Nancy Day. 



THE REDDEN FAMILY 
Jamesi Redden, Sr., b. in Dublin, Ireland, in 1759, came to Hali- 
fax, N. S., in 1775, at the age of 16. From Halifax he removed to 
Windsor Forks, Hants county. He m. in 1798, Margaret Lawrence, 
of Windsor, and d. in 1819. Children: 

i John, b. in 1799. 

ii Thomas, b. in 1801. 

iii Harry, b. in 1803. 

iv Mary, b. in 1805. 

V Patrick, b. in 1807, came to Horton about 1840, and had a 

family, one of his sons being Rufus Redden, who long 

lived in Kentville. 



798 KING'S COUNTY 

vi Hannah, b. in 1809. 

vii Robert, b. in 1811, came to Horton about 1850, and settled 
in New Minas, where his family were well known. 

viii Dennis, b. in 1813. 

ix William, b. in 1815, in Windsor, Maxner, and came 

to Kentville in April, 1842, where he was long a pro- 
gressive and useful man. He d. Dec. 4, 1894. See 
Personal Sketches. The best known of his children 
in the county to-day is John Redden, Esq., who has 
for many years held positions of great usefulness in 
the shire town. Children of William Redden: James 
David; John; Margaret; Rebecca; Henry; William 
Rachel, wife of John W. King, Esq., of Kentville 
Harry. 



THE REID OR REED FAMILY 

In the large grant of land in Horton in 1761, appear the names 
of James, Mary, Samuel, Samuel, Jr., and William Reid, each with 
a half share, or 250 acres, of land. The eldest of these grantees was 
Samuel^ Reed, son of John and Deborah (Niles) Reid, Read or 
Reed, b. at Lyme, Conn., Dec. 11, 1709. In 1749 he was made Lieut, 
in the North Lyme train-band, then just formed, and for the next 
eleven years he was a prominent land-owner in Lyme. April 23, 
1760, however, he disposed of the last of his Lyme property and 
came to King's County. He m. Sarah, dan. of John and Sarah Har- 
vey, of Lyme, who. d. in Horton, Feb. 9, 1774, aged 48. Samuel 
Reid himself d., his tombstone in the Wolfville burying ground says, 
"January 6, 1783, aged 77." (But his age as given on the tomb- 
stone is evidently wrong.) A record of the births of Samuel and 
Sarah (Harvey) Reid's children is said to exist at Hamburg, Conn., 
but it has not yet been discovered. These children, however, in- 
cluded the following : William ; Samuel, Jr. ; Ezra ; Duncan. In 1763 
Samuel Reid bought from the Rev. John Breynton, D. D., of Hali- 
fax, "First Division Farm Lot in Horton, near the farm house of 
Dr. Breynton, and several other lots besides." His homestead was 
on the eastern slope of the hill which lies between the Gaspereau 
River and Wolfville, looking towards Avonport. That of his son, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 799 

Samnel, Jr., was "on the Cornwallis River, below Kentville, and was 
once known as the Carruthers Place." 

Samuel- Reid, Jr., (Samuel^) m. in Horton, Mary Forsyth. Chil- 
dren : 

i Thomas. 

ii Samuel, m. Catherine, dan. of Stephen and Desire (Chap- 
pell) Barnaby, b. in Cornwallis, Aug. 13, 1773. Chil- 
dren: Elisha; Desire; Stephen; Isaac, b. Sept. 11, 
1797, m. Huldah, dan. of Joseph and Olive (Eaton) 
Rockwell, (and had, at least: Rosina, b. Aug. 29, 
1825; Gideon Eaton, b. Sept. 29, 1831) ; Samuel; 
Elizabeth; Sarah Alice; James; Joseph; David; Mary, 
m. to Russell Coldwell. 

iii Christopher. 

iv George. 

V Gilbert. 

vi Eleazer. 
And several daughters. 

Ezra2 Reid (Samuel^) m. in Horton, Mary , who d. Feb. 12, 

1832, aged 79. He d. April 5, 1832, aged 83. They had sons : John ; 
Walter ; Duncan, m. to Ephia Wiekwire ; Theodore ; perhaps Samuel, 
and at least one dau., Jerusha, who was m. to Thomas Wiekwire, son 
of Dyer and Temperance (Clark) Wiekwire. 

Duncans Reid, J. P., (Samuel^), b. in 1747, m. in Horton, Sept. 22, 
1769, Jerusha, dau. of Stephen and Elizabeth (Clark) Post, and 
had children: William, b. July 2, 1770; Sarah, b. Feb. 3, 1773; 
James, b. Dec. 25, 1775 ; Benjamin Belcher, b. Feb. 26, 1777 ; Eliza- 
beth, b. March 25, 1779; Guilford, b. Feb. 16, 1787. About 1783, 
Duncan removed to New Horton, N. B., near Harvey, where he had 
a large tract of land. There his family grew up, his son Guilford, 
b. Feb.l6. 1787, in New Horton, marrying Anne, dau. of Capt. 
Moses and Mehitable (Patten) Shaw, and having 5 children. The 
eldest of these children was Granville Bevil, b. Jan. 24, 1812, m. 
May 24, 1836, Leah, dau. of Benjamin and Leah (Fowler) Greene, 
of the Rhode Island Greenes. The eldest son of Granville Bevil was 
Guilford Shaw Reid, b. Sept. 17, 1837, m. March 17, 1859, Ella 



800 KING'S COUNTY 

Pauline, dau. of John and Maria (Wade) Berryman, of St. John, 
N. B. Of this marriage there were seven children, of whom two 
daughters remain. One of these is Helen Leah Reed, of Boston, an 
authoress of note ; the other, Ethel Carleton, is the wife of Everett 
Morss, of Boston. Josepji Shaw Reid, 2nd, son of Guilford, was for 
many years until his death. High Sheriff of Albert county, N. B. 

Miss Helen Leah« Reed (Guilford Shaw^, Granville Bevil*, Guil- 
ford^, Duncan^, Samuel^), of whom mention has already been made, 
although born in St. John, N. B., except for ten years in Cambridge, 
Mass., has lived chiefly in Boston. She was one of the early stu- 
dents at the Harvard Annex (Radcliffe College), where she grad- 
uated A. B., in 1890. As an undergraduate she was the first win- 
ner of a prize offered by John Osborne Sargent, of New York, for 
the best metrical translation of an ode of Horace. Her version was 
published in Scrihner's Magazine. Miss Reed's first piece of fiction 
was published in the New England Magazine in 1895, later appear- 
ing in book form. Since then four other volumes of the "Brenda" 
stories have been issued. The list of her published books includes, 
also, two volumes of the "Irma" series, and "Napoleon's Young 
Neighbor," an interesting historical sketch. Miss Reed is a member 
of the Boston Authors' Club, Cercolo Italiano, College Club, Wom- 
an's University Club of New York, American Polk Lore Society, 
Woman's Education Association, and other literary and scientific or- 
ganizations. 

Walter^ Reid (Ezra^ Samuel^), m. (1) in Cornwallis, June 14, 
1801, Letitia, "dau. of Richard and Elizabeth Wilson of Elizabeth- 
port" (See Cornwallis Town Book); (2) July 22, 1812, Ann, dau. 
of David and Susannah (Potter) Starr. Children by 1st wife: 
Richard, b. June 9, 1802 ; Rebecca, b. Nov. 19, 1803 ; Sarah, b. Aug. 
24, 1805, m. to James Rand; Lavinia, b. May 18, 1807; Margaret, b. 
April 30, 1809, m. to Roland DeWolfe; Letitia, b. May 15, 1811. 
Child by 2nd wife : Harriet Sophia, b. Sept. 16, 1815, m. to Henry 
Lyons. 

Duncan^ Reid (Ezra^, Samuel^), m. in Horton, Oct. 26, 1817, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 801 

Aphia or Ephia, dan. of Dyer (probably "Zebediah," Jr.) and Tem- 
perance (Clark) Wickwire, and had children: Ruxby Ann, b. June 

or July 14, 1818, m. to Allen ; Ezra, b. Nov. 1, 1819, m. a dau. 

of William and Sophia (Eaton) Ells, and had a family; Josepji 
Greenleaf, b. Jan. 1, 1801; Walter, who had sons: Aubrey; Freeman; 
Greenleaf ; Henry ; Robert ; Otis ; Ernest ; Iva Ella ; Duncan. 

Samuel'^ Reid (perhaps Ezra^, SamueU), m. in Horton, Elizabeth, 
dau. of Caleb and Eunice (DeWolf) Forsyth, b. Dee. 19, 1787, d. 
March 4, 1866. He had a son, James Reid, who m. Mary A. West, 
and had a son, Samuel, b. March 2, 1831, who m. Lydia E. Barna- 
by, and had children: Rupert H., m. Ada Hodges; Edward, m. (1) 
Cynthia Freeman, (2) Elizabeth Chesley; George W., m. Annie Rice 
of New Glasgow ; Frank, d. 3^oung ; Harriet, m. to Truman Eaton. 

Gideon Eaton^ Reid, J. P., (Isaac*, SamueP, SamueP, SamueU), 
b. Sept. 29, 1831, m. Jan. 14, 1857, Ruth, dau. of Gideon and Lucilla 
S. (Perkins) Cogswell, b. April 20, 1834. He d. April 
7, 1905. Children: Arthur T., b. December 7, 1857, Harry Her- 
bert, b. February 4, 1860 ; Frederick William, b. February, 6, 1862 ; 
Ladd H., b. February 16, 1864; Robie Lewis, b. November 3, 
1866, studied at Pictou Academy, and in 1882 matriculated at 
Dalhousie College, winning there a Munro bursary of $150 
a year for two years. On account of illness he left college in his 
second year. In 1887-8 he studied law at Dalhousie, and in 1888-9, 
at the University of Michigan, where he took the degree of LL. B. 
He then practised in the state of Washington, until 1892, when he 
removed to British Columbia, to the bar of which province he was 
admitted in 1893. From 1893 to 1905 he practised at New West- 
minster, where he was alderman in 1899-1900, and in the latter year 
unsuccessful candidate for the Local House, his opponent being 
the Hon. J. C. Brown, Minister of Finance. In 1899 he was appoint- 
ed Debenture Commissioner for the city, which office he still holds. 
In 1906 he went to Vancouver, where the next year he formed a 
partnership with Hon. W. J. Bowser, Attorney General of B. C, 



802 KING'S COUNTY 

and D. S. Wallbridge. In 1907 he was appointed a K. C. Other 
members of the Eeid family fill useful positions in various parts 
of Canada, 

Mary Reid, the Horton grantee, was probably a widow. She 
undoubtedly went back to Connecticut, for in 1769 she sold in 
Horton a town lot to Nathan DeWolf, and in the conveyance is 
described as "of Norwich, in the County of New London, Conn," 



THE ROCKWELL FAMILY 

The founder of the Eockwell family in King's County was 
Jonathan^ Rockwell, who received his grant in Cornwallis in 
1761, He was a son of Joseph and Hannah (Huntington) Rock- 
well, probably of East Windsor, Conn, (See Stiles' Hist, of Ancient 

Windsor), and was b. May 2, 1723, He m. Margaret , and 

before coming to Nova Scotia had children: 

i Jonathan, b. in 1747, m. Oct. 24, 1773, Abigail Coats. C!hil- 
dren: Margaret; Beulah, m. to John Knox; Sarah, 
m, to William Williams. 

ii Asael, b. in 1749, m. Ruth Brooks. 

iii Joseph, b. in 1751, m, Lydia Barnaby, 

iv Benjamin, b. in 1753, removed from Nova Scotia to New 
Brunswick, and his family are to be sought in Carle- 
ton county, in that province. He is said to have m. 
in 1785, Susan Tapley, who d. in 1840. He d. in 1848. 
Children: Hannah; Joseph; Samuel; Mary; Susan; 
Sarah; Benjamin; Elijah; Lot; Mary; Eliza. 

v Sarah, b. in 1754, m. to Reuben Styles. 

vi Hannah, b. in 1756, m. to Benoni Sweet. 

vii Daniel, m, Ann , and had a family who are to be 

found in Cumberland county. This is made clear 
by a letter from Charles D. Rockwell, of "Amherst 
Shore," written in 1872, and printed on pp. 141-148 
of "The Rockwell Family," published in Boston in 
1873. The births of Daniel's children: Ebenezer; 
Elizabeth; Sarah; William; Anne; Lydia; and 
James, are to be found on the Cornwallis Town 
Book. 
AsaeP Rockwell (Jonathan^), b. in 1749, m. Jan. 27, probably 
1780, Ruth, dau. of Benjamin and Hannah Brooks. He may have 



FAMILY SKETCHES 803 

m. (1) Mary Brooks. At any rate he had a dau. Ann, who is said 
to have been b. in 1776, and who was m. Nov. 4, 1806, to Benjamin 
DeWolf, son of John DeWolf, and had 9 children. Children : 

i Ann, b, in 1776, m, to Benjamin DeWolf. 

ii John, b. Oct. 23, 1780, m. (1) Rebecca DeWolf, (2) 

Emily Eaton. 

iii Benjamin, b. March 11, 1784. * 

iv Gurdon, b. July 7, 1786. 

V Nancy, b. Sept. 2, 1787. 
vi Lydia. 

vii Hannah, 
viii Jerusha, 

Joseph2 Rockwell (Jonathan^), b. in 1751, m. Feb. 22, 1775, Lydia, 

dau. of Stephen and Desiah Barnaby. Children : 

i Jerusha, b. Feb. 12, 1776, m. to Nathan West. 

ii Lydia, b. Jan. 18, 1778, d. in 1778. 

iii Prudence, b. April 4, 1779, m, to William Bowles. 

iv Samuel, b. Feb. 16, 1781, m, in 1810, Rebecca Bill, and d. 

in 1872. His only son, George N. b. in 1814, m. 

Charlotte Bentley, and had 8 children. 

V Noah, b. Nov. 27, 1782, m. Jan. 12, 1814, Deborah, 4th 

child of Elijah and Elizabeth (Rand) Eaton, and had 
children: Elijah Eaton, b. Oct. 6, 1816; Joseph, b. 
June 6, 1818, m. Jane Gesner; Gideon Eaton, b. Jan. 
6, 1820, m. in 1847, Mary Rockwell; Leonard, b. 
Sept. 6, 1821; m. in 1847, Elmira Walton; Lavinia, 
b. in 1823, m. in 1848, to Campbell Bowles ; Prudence 
Jane, b. in 1825, m. to Jacob Miner Roscoe; Char- 
lotte, b. in 1827, m. in 1847, to Michael Pearl; 
William H., b. in 1829, m. in 1854, Susan Rockwell; 
Leander V., b. in 1830, m. in 1860, Annie Payson; 
Paulina, b. in 1837, m. in 1866, to David Skerry, 
vi Joseph, b. Nov. 7, 1784, m. Nov. 23, 1807, Olive, dau. of 
Timothy and Huldah (Woodworth) Eaton, b. Sept. 
3, 1788, and had 11 children: Huldah, b. in 1808, 
m. in 1826, to Isaac Reid; Alice Wells, b. in 1809, 
d. in 1839; Sophia, b. in 1812, m. in 1841, to her 
cousin, James Bragg; Ruth Ann, b. in 1815, m, in 
1838, to James Harris; Mary Lavinia, b. in 1817, 
m. in 1842 to Samuel Evans; Gideon Eaton, b. in 
1820, m. in 1845, Alice Bragg; George Washington; 
Amanda Olivia, b. in 1821, m. in 1843, to Cyrus 



804 KING'S COUNTY 

Webster ; Wilhelmina, b. in 1824, m. in 1851 to Samuel 

Kinsman; Timothy; Maria, 
vii Benjamin, b. Sept. 30, 1786, m. Elizabeth Foot, and had 

6 children, 
viii Ruth, b. March 7, 1789. 
ix Gideon, b. Feb. 12, 1791, m. in 1814, Acsah Porter, and 

had 10 children. 
X Eunice, b. Jan. 19, 1793, m. to John Palmeter, 
xi Alice, b. Oct. 29, 1794, m. Nov. 20, 1816, to Gideon Eaton 

(Timothy), b. June 21, 1791. 
xii John, b. Nov. 12, 1796, m. in 1824, Ruby Porter, and had 

4 children, 
xiii Lydia, b. in 1797, d. young. 

Jolm3 Rockwell (AsaeP, Jonathan^), b. Oct. 23, 1780, m (1), in 
1803, Rebecca, dau. of Nathan and Anna (Hamilton) DeWolf of Hor- 
ton, b. in 1785, d. in 1808. He m. (2) Nov. 22, 1812, Emily, dau. of 
David and Eunice (Wells) Eaton, b. Jan. 29, 1791. Children by 1st 
marriage : 

i Ruth, b. in 1804, m. to Aaron Chapman. 

ii Eliza Ann, b. in 1806, m. to Peter Wickwire. 

iii Nathan DeWolf, b. in 1808, d. unm. 

Children by second marriage: 

iv David N., b. in 1814, m. Rebecca Bacon and had 4 chil- 
dren. 

V John, b. in 1816, m. (1) Melissa Graves, (2) Burbidge. 

By his 1st wife he had children: Eunice; Emily; 
John; Moses. By his 2nd wife he had one dau., 
Alfaretta. 

vi Rebecca, b. in 1818, d, young. 

vii Judah B., J. P., b. in 1820, m. in 1846, Prudence Belcher, 
and had children, the eldest of whom is Sheriff 
Charles Frederick Rockwell, of Kentville. 

viii Levi W., b. in 1822, m. Clinkard and had 2 children, 

Frances, still living, Levi, Jr., dead. For many years 
Mr. Rockwell was in business in Boston, where in the 
produce business and in real estate he accumulated 
a large fortune. In 1910 he is still living. 

ix James E., b. in 1825, m. in 1863, Matilda Barnaby, and 
had 3 children, Clarence, Eva, Caleb Gordon. 

x William A., b. in 1827, m. (1) Elizabeth Silliman, (2) 

Elizabeth Kinsman. Child by 1st wife, Emily, m. 

to Charles Bird. Children by 2nd wife : Annie, m. to 



FAMILY SKETCHES 805 

Fenwick Williams Rand ; Winnie ; William ; Joseph ; 
Wylie, m. Miss Calkin of Kentville, and is a partner 
in the hardware firm of T. P. Calkin & Co. ; Stanton, 
D. D. S., m. Isabel, dan. of Delancey Sheffield, and 
practises dentistry at Kentville. 
xi George, b. in 1832, was also a prosperous merchant in 
Boston. He m. Mary Booker, and has a son William, 
a merchant in Boston, who lives in Medford. 



THE ROGERS FAIVQLY 

Three members of the Rogers family of New London, Conn., 
appear among the grantees in King's County, Jeremiah and Stephen 
Rogers in Cornwallis, and Rowland Rogers in Horton. Unfortu- 
nately, the Rogers Genealogy, published in 1902, does not enable 
us to determine with certainty the parentage of any one of them, 
but Rowland Rogers was perhaps a son of Rowland and Mary 
(DeWolf) Rogers, perhaps of John and Deborah (Dayton) Rogers; 
and it is possible that Stephen was a son of Jonathan and Alice 
(Champion) Rogers, but of all this we are not certain. 

Stephen^ Rogers, grantee in Cornwallis in 1764, m. Lucretia , 

and had a daughter Lucy, b. Feb. 17, 1763 ; a son Lemuel, b. April 
19, 1765, and a son James, b. June 30, 1767. Of these, Lemuel m. 

Dee. 7, 1786, Eunice Bennett or Bentley, and had a son , b. 

June 16, 1788, m. in Jan., 1825, Abigail McDonald, b. Feb. 9, 1802, 
d. Sept. 16, 1900. A Patrick Rogers m. in Cornwallis, in 1819, 
Catherine, dau. of Francis Lyons, but we do not know who he was. 

3 Rogers m. Abigail McDonald, and had 10 children, 4 sons 

and 6 dans, of these in 1910 are living: Mrs. William Parker, of 
Delfhaven; James M., of Scots Bay, aged 81; William, aged 77; 
Thomas Lemuel, of Blomidon, b. May 5, 1839, m, Maria L Hiltz; 
Alexander C, of Roslindale, Mass., aged 65. 

Thomas Lemuel^ Rogers, b. May 5, 1839, m. Jan. 19, 1866, Maria 
L. Hiltz, b. May 7, 1845, and has had 13 children (of whom 12 are 
living). These are: Clara, Mrs. G. Gardner, of East Weymouth, 
Mass.; Maude, Mrs. R. Broad, of Golden, Colorado; Bell, Mrs. M. 
McBride, of Canning, N. S. ; Nellie, Mrs. J. McBride, of Canning; 



806 KING'S COUNTY 

Abigail; Cora living at Blomidon; James E,, of Habitant; Moore 
A., of Blomidon; David L., of Pereau; Stephen L., of Golden, Col- 
orado; Oscar M., of Canning; Wilfred F., d. aged 21; Harold D., 
of Sheffield's Mills. These facts have been for the most p,art 
kindly furnished by Mr. Thomas Lemuel Eogers of Blomidon. 

A Rowland Rogers, m. April 10, 1783, Hannah Jeffreys, and had 
children recorded in Horton : Catherine, b. April 6, 1784 ; Jonathan, 
b. March 6, 1786; Joseph, b. Dec. 25, 1788; Isaac, b. June 20, 1791; 
Rowland (probably), b. Dec. 25, 1795. We regret that we cannot 
make this Rogers sketch more complete. 



THE ROSCOE FAMILY 
William^ Roscoe a native of Bristol, England, came to Nova Scotia 

about 1790 and settled at Centreville, Comwallis. He m. 

Miner and had sons: William, b. in 1797; James; Josiah; . 

Of these sons, William lived at Centreville until his death in 1860, 
James settled near Hall's Harbour; Josiah went to Cumberland 
county; the 4th son settled on St. John river, N. B. 

William^ Roscoe (Williami) b. in 1797, m. probably in 1821, 
Eunice Porter, eldest dau. of John and Amy (Miner or Minor) 
Porter, b. Sept. 22, 1795, d. aged 35. Children: 

i Jacob Miner, b. March 14, 1822, m. Prudence Jane Rock- 
well. 

ii Amy. 

iii William Henry, m. (1) Eunice Cox, (2) Deborah Atkinson, 
and had 2 children: Josiah; Catherine, m. to Isaac 
North. 

James2 Roscoe (William^), m. . Children: John W., b. in 

1813 ; William A. ; Josiah ; Janet. Of these sons, William A,, had 
a dau. Isabella, who was m. to Ezra Taylor Bucknam (John, 
Samuel), b. at Hall's Harbour, lived at Hantsport, in Cumberland 
Co., and near Bucksport, Maine. Ezra Taylor and Isabella (Roscoe) 
Bucknam had a son Ransford D., b. in Hantsport in 1869, who re- 
moved with his parents to Maine, when he was an infant, and at 



FAMILY SKETCHES 807 

14 years of age began an eventful career by going to sea in a mer- 
chant sailing ship. He finally commanded merchant ships on both 
the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and the Great Lakes. He then 
became successively, Supt. of the American Steel Barge Co., of New 
York, Supt. of Pacific Mail Ships at Panama, Supt. of Cramp's 
Shipyards at Philadelphia, trial commander on the U. S. S. Maine 
and Imperial Ottoman S. S. Medgidia. The latter S. S. he command- 
ed from Philadelphia to Turkey, with the result that April 19, 1904, 
he was appointed Naval Adviser and personal A. D. C. to the 
Sultan, who decorated him with the Turkish Order of Osmanieh, and 
Distinguished Service Medal. His residence is 38, Rue Marlian, 
Constantinople, Turkey. The American Bucknam family was 
founded in Charlestown, Mass., about 1640, by William Bucknam, 
but one member of it, Samuel, removed about 1720 to Falmouth, 
Maine. It is probable that the Bucknam family of Hall's Harbour, 
King's county, of whom we have no detailed records were from 
the Maine branch of the New England family of that name. 

Ja^ob Miners Roscoe (William^ Williami), b. March 14, 1822, 
m. Prudence Jane, dau. of Noah and Deborah (Eaton) Rockwell, b. 
in 1825. He d. in 1888. Mr. Roscoe was one of the most highly 
respected men in the county and for many years was a magistrate 
and a Commissioner of Schools for the county. For several terms, 
also, he represented Ward 3 in the Municipal Council. In politics 
he was a liberal, a strong supporter of the Hon. Joseph Howe. 
Children who grew to maturity : 

i Everett W., m. Mary West. 

ii Lt.-Col. Wentworth Eaton, 

iii Henry S., m. Mrs. Elizabeth (Simpson) Palmeter. 

iv Prudence Emma, m. to Watson Parker. 

V Lavinia Jane. 

vi Clarence Miner, m. Mary Morton. 

Lt. Col. Wentworth Eaton Roscoe, M. A., K. C, second son of 
Jacob Miner Roscoe, Esq., is a leading representative of the Roscoe 
family in the county at present. He was born at Centreville, edu- 
cated at Horton Academy and at Dalhousie University, and was 



808 KING'S COUNTY 

called to the Nova Scotia Bar, May 19, 1876, On his admission to 
the Bar he at once entered into partnership with Douglas B. Wood- 
worth, JVT. P. P., and M. P., in whose office he had studied law. 
In August, 1878, he began practice in Kentville on his own account, 
and this practice he continues to the present time. To the position 
of Warden of the County he has been four times elected, in 1891, 
'93, '96, and '99. For two years previous to '91 he served as 
County Councillor, and in 1889, he was appointed Commissioner 
of Schools. In 1896 he was made a Q. C, and the following year 
was made M. A., by Acadia University, at Wolfville. He is at 
present a lecturer on contracts in the affiliated law course in Acadia. 
In 1902 he was appointed one of the Revisers of the Federal Statutes, 
of Canada under the chairmanship of Sir Henry Strong. In 1904, 
'05, 06, and '07, successively, he was elected Mayor of the town 
of Kentville. In 1872 he joined the 68th Battalion of Militia; rising 
to 2nd Lieut., first Lieut., Captain in 1882, and Major in 1898, he 
was appointed, Dec. 31, 1905, Lieut. Col. of the 68th K. C. Eegt., 
to succeed Lt.-Col. Edward M. Beckwith. Col. Roscoe has a wide 
law practice and has successfully conducted many important cases. 
He m. Dec. 27, 1878, Annie E., dau. of Robert Martin, of Centre- 
ville, and has children : Barry Wentworth, Barrister ; Ethel Annie ; 
Lulu Evelyn; Murray Eaton. 

John W.3 Roscoe (James^, Williami), b. in 1813, m. Elizabeth 
North, probably a dau. of William and Lois (Strong) North, b. 
March 13, 1814. He d. in 1886. Children : 

i Milledge, b. Jan. 23, 1838, m. in 1857, Susan Robinson, 
and d. in 1904. 

ii Colin W., b. in 1839, m. in 1866, Annie A. Noble. He was 
educated at Horton Academy and Acadia University, 
for ten years was successfully engaged in teaching, 
and in 1873 was appointed by the Government, In- 
spector of Schools for King's County, in 1880, Hants 
also coming under his jurisdiction. He has thus 
served as Inspector of Schools for 37 years. In 1882 
he received from Acadia University the honorary 
degree of M. A. He has served as a G-overnor of 
Acadia, and as one of the Executive Committee for 



FAMILY SKETCHES 809 

about 20 years. His children living are: Prances 

A. (Mrs, Briggs) ; Gertrude V. ; Victor L. ; and 

Viola M. 
iii Eufus A., b. in 1841, m. in 1869, Lida Morton, and d. 

in 1896. 
iv Owen K., b. in 1844, m. in 1864, Sarah Parker, and d. 

in 1891. 
V Sidney, b. in 1846, m. in 1867, Mary Jane Parker. 
vi Simpkins R., b. in 1850, m. in 1872, Emily E. Paul, 
vii Arthur, b. in 1853, d. in 1884. 



THE SANFORD FAMILY 

Benjamini Sanford, founder of the King's County Sanford family, 
b. in Newport, R. I., in 1732, was a son of Capt. Esbon Sanford 
(descended from John Sanford, 3rd President of the Colony of 
Rhode Island, and his wife Mary (Woodward). He m. (1) in 1754, 

Amelia , and in May, 1760, came from Newport in the sloop 

Sally, Jonathan Lovatt, master, to Falmouth, Hants county. At 
the same time came a Joshua Sanford, and later came another 
Joshua, and besides, Joseph, Encome, Woodward, Esbon and Peleg. 
Dee. 13, 1763, Benjamin Sanford bought property in Cornwallis of 
Benjamin Borden. About 1800 his wife Amelia d., and Oct. 4, 1804, 
he m. (2) Mrs. Lydia (Strong) Rand, widow of Jonathan Rand, b. 
April 13, 1748. Children by first marriage : 

i Susanna, b. Dec. 4, 1754, m. Feb. 27, 1772, Nathan, son 

of Elnathan and Elizabeth Palmeter. 
ii Mary, b. Feb. 4, 1756, m. Feb. 8, 1776, to Jonathan, son 

of Stephen and Hannah Loomer. 
iii Daniel, b. Jan. 1, 1758, m. Ruby Strong, 
iv Abigail, b. Nov. 17, 1759, m. June 6, 1776, to Benjamin 

Newcomb, and d. in 1840. (The above were born 

in Newport, R. I.) 
V Edward, b. March 16, 1761, m. (1) Phebe, dau. of Eddy 

and Phebe Newcomb, (2) Jane, dau. of John and 

Katherine Beckwith. 
vi Benjamin, Jr., b. April 2, 1763, m. Freedom Strong, 
vii Amelia, b. Aug. 20, 1764, m. Dec. 2, 1784, Samuel, son of 

Joshua and Mary Ells, 
viii Samuel, b, April 24, 1766, m. Ruth Newcomb. 
ix Sarah, b. Nov. 6, 1767, m. Nov. 13, 1795, to Amasa Keller. 



810 KING'S COUNTY 

X Elizabeth, b. Jan. 25, 1771, m. to Samuel Loonier. 

xi Waity, b. Aug. 20, 1772, m. in 1790, to Eddy, only son 

son of John Newcomb, and d. in 1791. 
xii Deborah, b. May 8, 1774, m. in 1800 to Ira Woodworth, b. 

Feb. 7, 1771. She d. Jan. 1, 1829. 
xiii John, b. April 1, 1776, m. (1) in 1800, Waity Palmeter, 
I (2) Mrs. Lucy (Farnsworth) Eaton. 

DanieP Sanford (Benjamin^) b. in Newport, R. I., Jan. 1, 1758, 

m. Feb. 10, 1780, Ruby, dau. of Stephen, Jr., and Elizabeth Strong, 

and sister of his stepmother Lydia. He d. about 1833, she d. in 

1848, aged 80. Children: 

i David, b. Jan. 1, 1781, d. young, 

ii Joshua, b. Jan. 10, 1783, m. Elizabeth Weaver, 

iii Joseph, b. Oct. 26, 1784, m. Nov. 15, 1806, Wealthea Pal- 
meter. 

iv Elizabeth, b. Nov. 26, 1786, d. in 1800. 

V Benjamin, b. Dec. 1, 1788, m. Sept. 3, 1812, Sarah Illsley. 
vi Waity, b. May 4, 1791, m. Feb. 7, 1811, Thomas, son of 

Daniel Johnson, 

vii Stephen, b. May 5, 1793, d. young, 

viii Deborah, b. May 2, 1795, d. young. 

ix Lydia, b. Sept. 2, 1795, m. to Asa Huntley, of Scots Bay. 

X Daniel, b. Jan. 20, 1799, m. Amelia Sanford. 

xi Ruby, b. Jan. 22, 1801, m. to Daniel Johnson, 

xii Eber, b. Sept. 3, 1803, d. about 1824. 

Benjamin^ Sanford, Jr., (Benjamin^), b. in Horton, April, 2, 1763, 
m. March 25, 1790, Freedom, dau. of Stephen, Jr., and Elizabeth 
Strong, b. July 21, 1766. He lived to be almost a hundred years 
old, she d. about 1860. Children: 

i James, b. Jan. 2, 1791, m. Sarah Woolaver. 
ii Elizabeth, b. Oct. 2, 1792, m. to Nathan Loomer. 
iii John, b. Sept. 25, 1794, m. Roxana, dau. of James Lang- 
ley, 
iv Mary, b. Dec. 6, 1796, m. to John McDonald. 

V Sarah, b. Sept. 12, 1798, m. to Henry, son of Thomas 

Borden, 
vi Daniel, b. Aug. 4, 1800, m. Eliza, dau. of Joseph Dimock 

of Newport, Hants county, 
vii Amelia, b. Aug. 2, 1802, m. to Deacon Daniel Sanford 

(Daniel), b. Jan. 20, 1799. 
viii Lois, b. July 2, 1805, m. to Thomas Borden 



FAMILY SKETCHES 811 

ix Driisilla, b. June 20, 1807, m. to William McPhee. 

X Cinderella, twin with Drusilla, m. to Donald McDonald, 

of Somerset, King's County, 
xi Rebecca Ann, b. July 2, 1814, m. to Charles Sanford 

(John), b. March 18, 1811. 

SamueP Sanford (Benjamin^), b. April 24, 1766, m. Feb. 14, 
1787, Ruth, dau. of John and Mercy Newcomb. Children : 

i John Newcomb, b. Dec. 25, 1788, m. (1) March 18, 1813, 
Sophia Condon, (2) March 7, 1821, Charlotte Wood- 
worth. 

ii David, b. Feb. 10, 1790. 

iii Jonathan, b. Nov. 1, 1792. 

iv Mary, b. Sept. 11, 1795. 

V Jacob, b. Aug. 25, 1796. 
vi Elizabeth, b. June 3, 1798. 
vii Amelia, b. March 13, 1800. 

John2 Sanford (Benjamin^), b. in Horton, April 1, 1776, m. (1) 
in 1800, Waity, dau. of Charles and Hannah (Huntley) Palmeter, 
who d. in May, 1813. He m. (2), Mrs. Lucy (Farnsworth) Eaton, 
dau. of Solomon and Lucy (Farnsworth) Farnsworth, and widow 
of James Eaton, b. June 15, 1777. Children by first marriage : 

i James Gordon, b. July 17, 1802, m. Hannah Weaver. 

ii Benjamin, b. Oct. 12, 1803, m. Caroline, dau. of James 
and Lucy (Farnsworth) and had children: Judah, 

m. Tupper; Walter Manning, m. Rebecca 

Martin; Lucy Ann, m. to Colin DeWolf, and d. in 
1892; John M., m. Sarah Ann (Tupper), widow of 
Eber Sanford (Deacon Daniel); George; Julia 
m. to George Whalin. 

iii William Palmeter, b. April 20, 1805. 

iv Maria Ann, b. Feb. 15, 1807, m. to George, son of Deacon 
Daniel Sanford. 

V Emma Eliza, b. June 28, 1809, m. to John Witt. 

vi Charles, b. March 18, 1811, m. Rebecca Ann, dau. of 

Benjamin Sanford, Jr. 
vii Nathan, b. Feb. 13, 1813, m. Rachel Jane Newcomb. 

Children by 2nd marriage : 

viii James, b. Aug. 22, 1816, m. in 1840, Angelina Sophronia 

Newcomb. 
ix Waity, b. June 19, 1817, m. in 1848, to Ebenezer Bigelow, 



812 KING'S COUNTY 

ship-builder at Canning, N. S. They had 10 children. 

Both d. in 1889. 
X Manning, b. July 25, 1819, m. Harriet Corbit. 
xi Henry, b. Aug. 9, 1821. 

Joshua^ Sanford (DanieP, Benjamini), b. Jan. 10, 1783, m. in 
1806, Elizabeth "Weaver, and lived in Woodville. He d. about 
1844. She d. June, 1849, aged 60. Children: 

i Erastus P., b. Sep.t. 20, 1808, m. Mary, dau. of Amos 

Porter, 
ii Jeremiah, b. April 13, 1810, m. Eliza, dau. of James 

Porter, 
iii Wealthy, b. Dec. 19, 1813, m. to Benjamin, son of Amos 

Porter, 
iv Daniel, b. Jan. 15, 1816, m. Waity, dau. of Amos Porter. 
V Lydia, b. June 10, 1818, m. to Charles, son of Amos 

Porter, 
vi Ruby, b. July 14, 1820, m. to Wm. H. Loveless, and d. 

Sept. 5, 1887. 
vii William N., b. Sept. 10, 1822. 
viii Mary, m. to Rufus, son of Samuel Wood, 
ix James, m. (1) Eunice, dau. of Nathan Schofield, (2) 

Hannah Dunn. 
X Jane, m. to Andrew, son of Wm. Mahar. 
xi Marilla, m. to Thomas, son of Wm. Mahar. 



THE SAUNDERS FAMILY 

The Saunders family, primarily an Annapolis county family, which 
has also, however, had prominent representatives in King's, was 
founded in Annapolis in 1760 or soon after, by Timothy Saunders, 
whose wife was "Martha Neily, widow of James Reagh, an Irish 
lady." They had 7 children, a record of the families of three of 
whom, Timothy, b. in 1791 ; Rev. Henry, b. in 1793 ; and David, b. 
in 1799, is given on the Aylesford Town Book. Of these, David, m. 
March 12, 1818, Elizabeth Bass, and had children: John, b. May 
14, 1819; Obadiah, b. Aug. 4, 1821; Cynthia, b. Jan. 21, 1823; 
Elizabeth, b. Oct. 3, 1825 ; Maria, b. Oct. 28, 1827, m. to James Van 
Buskirk; Rev. Edward, D. D., b. Dec. 20, 1829; Martha, b. Aug. 
18, 1832 ; David, b. Oct. 2, 1835. Of these, the Rev. Edward Man- 



FAMILY SKETCHES 813 

niiig Saunders. D. D., a clergyman of distinction, whose name has 
been frequently mentioned in this book, m. Maria Kisboro Freeman, 
and has a daughter, Miss Margaret Marshall Saunders, whose name 
has been mentioned among the authors in this book. For further 
information concerning this family see the History of Annapolis 
and many other works. 



SAWYER FAMILIES 

Of the two Sawyer families in King 'a County, both of recent origin 
in the county, one has already had mention in the Barnaby Family 
sketch, the other is that of the Rev, Artemas Wyman Sawyer, D. D., 
long the honoured President of Acadia University. The Rev. Dr. 
Sawyer was born in "West Haven, Vermont, March 4, 1827, and 
married in Wolfville, a daughter of the Rev. John Chase. He was 
graduated at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N. H., in 1847, studied 
theology at Newton Theological Institute, in Mass., and received 
the degree of D.D., from Colby University in 1867. He came to 
Acadia College as Professor of Ancient Languages in 1855, and so 
remained until 1861. In 1869 he was made President of the col- 
lege. He was a gentleman of dignitj^ and culture and successfully 
filled the responsible office he so long held. Of his children, Pro- 
fessor Everett "W. Sawyer, who m. a daughter of Rev. Edmund 
Albern Crawley, D. D., D. C. L., has had previous notice in this book. 



THE SCHOFIELD FAMILY 

The origin of the Schofield family we have not been able to learn. 
Arthur Scovel was a grantee in Horton in 1761, but whether he 
was the progenitor of the following Schofields we do not know. 
The family in King's County was undoubtedly founded by a mem- 
ber of the Connecticut Scoville family, the history of which can be 
traced. 

From the Horton Town Book we learn that William Scho- 
field m. April 27, 1784, Hannah Bennett. Children: James, b. 



814 KING'S COUNTY 

Feb. 29, 1785 ; Jeremiah ; Lois ; Samuel ; Eunice ; Enoch ; Frederic ; 
Keziah ; Reuben ; Eachel. 

Nathan Schofield m. Hannah Ward. Children: Ann, b. March 
30, 1796 ; John, b. Dec. 17, 1798 ; Aaron, b. Jan. 3, 1799 ; Olive, b. 
March 30, 1800; Elisha, b. July 17, 1802; William, b. Oct. 15, 
1804 ; Pheby, b. Jan. 12, 1807 ; Sarah, b. March 19, 1809 ; Rebecca, 
b. April 4, 1811; Mary, b. Jan. 1, 1813; Hannah Susan, b. April 
27, 1815; Elijah, b. Jan. 5, 1817; William, b. April 30, 1816. 

Abner Schofield, m. Feb. 16, 1804, Olivia Ells. Children : Daniel 
b. June 1, 1804; Elizabeth, b. Sept. 16, 1806; Nathan, b. March 
23, 1808; John Henry, b. March 9, 1811; Gideon, b. Aug. 10, 1813; 
Abner, b. March 9, 1815 ; Orinda, b. Nov. 4, 1817 ; Jerusha, b. Aug. 
23, 1818 ; Jemima, b. July 28, 1820 ; Charlotte, b. Nov. 28, 1822. 

James Schofield, m. May 25, 1809, Sarah Hazen. Child: 
Pamela, b. April 25, 1810. 



THE SEAMAN FAMILY 

The Seaman family of Horton is a branch of the Long Island, 
N. Y., Seaman family, though all the links in the genealogy are 
not yet clear. Jacomiah Seaman, who d. in 1800, m. Margaret 
Bodee, who d, in 1811. By her he had sons : Hezekiah ; Abraham, 
b. in 1767; Stephen; Jacomiah, Jr. There is a tradition in the 
family that Jacomiah and his eldest son Hezekiah, were in the 
Battle of White Plains, N. Y., on the Loyalist side. Mr. Edward 
Seaman of Kentville writes: "Jacomiah, the Loyalist, came first 
to Cumberland county. My grandfather, his son Abraham, came 
to Horton and married, and I think all his children were born in 
Horton. While most of these children were young he went back 
to Cumberland, but his sons, Thomas Lewis, Jacomiah and Abraham, 
settled in Horton, and died there." Mr. Seaman says, also, that 
his great-grandfather, Jacomiah, "saw the whole 700 acres of the 
New or Wickwire Dyke, lying between the west end of the Grand 
Pre and Mud Creek, at Wolfville, in wheat, shortly after it was 
first dyked, in 1810." 



FAMILY SKETCHES 815 

Abraham^ Seaman (Jacomiahi), b. in 1767, m. in Horton, Mercy, 
dau. of Timothy Bishop, b. Feb. 8, 1776. He d. Ang. 17, 1848. She 
d. May 19, 1861. Children: Stephen, b. Dec. 14, 1795, m. Isabel 
Campbell; Thomas Lewis, b. Oct. 5, 1797, m. Rebecca Calkin, and 
d. Nov. 18, 1890; Mary Ann, b. April 7, 1799, m. to John Bigelow; 
Jacomiah, b. Dec. 8, 1800, m. Mrs. Lydia (DeWolf) Allison; Abra- 
ham, b. Oct. 8, 1803, m. Nancy Rebecca Allison; James, b. Nov. 7, 
1805; William, b. Dec. 17, 1807, d. Feb. 25, 1896; Harriet, b. Nov. 
27, 1809, m. to H. P. Pineo ; Pamelia, b. Nov. 24, 1811, m. to John 
Donkin; Olive, m. to Wright; Rebecca, m. to Levi Borden. 

Jacomiah^ Seaman, (Abraham^, Jacomiah^), b. Dee. 8, 1800, m. in 

1821, Mrs. Lydia (DeWolf) Allison, widow of Joseph Allison, b. 

Sept. 3, 1791, d. Feb. 2, 1872. He d. Sept. 20, 1876. Children : 

i Mary Sophia, b. Sept. 23, 1822, m. to Henry Terry. 

ii William Henry, b. Oct. 1, 1827, has a family and lives 

at Kentville. 
iii Louisa DeWolf, b. Aug. 28, 1833, d. April 21, 1846. 
iv Edward, b. Nov. 5, 1835, living at Kentville, one of the 

most intelligent local historians in the county. 
v Charles, b. Nov. 1836, d. April, 1838. 

Abraham^ Seaman, Jr., (Abraham^, Jacomiah^), b. Oct 8, 1803, 

m. Jan. 15, 1833, Nancy Rebecca Allison, dau. of Joseph and Lydia 

(DeWolf) Allison, b. Sept. 20, 1815, d. Sept. 18, 1879. He d. July 

15, 1880. Children: 

i Joseph Allison, b. July 23, d. Sept. 9, 1835. 

ii George, b. Aug. 31, 1837. 

iii Charles, b. Dec. 24, 1839, d. Oct. 22, 1853. 

iv aifford, b. Jan. 12, 1842, d. Sept. 16, 1879. 

V Eliza Allison, m. Oct. 1, 1867 to the Rev. Samuel Brad- 
ford Kempton, D. D. 

vi Amelia, d. Aug. 9, 1861. 



THE SHARP FAMILY 

On the Cornwallis Town Book are the following marriages: 
Robert Sharp, son of Robert Sharp, m. Sept. 17, 1804, Eunice 
dau. of Benjamin and Hannah (Pelton) Kinsman. Samuel 



816 KING'S COUNTY 

Sharp, m. March 24, 1813, by Rev. Robert Norris, Mary Giffen. 
The Starr Genalogy gives the 2nd marriage of ''Samuel Sharp, son 
of Robert and Elizabeth (Dunbar) Sharp,, b. in Machias, Me., in 
1779," Oct. 29, 1828, with Sarah, dau. of Joseph and Joanna 
(Leffingwell) Starr, b. May, 14, 1793, d. April 14, 1851. It says 
that Samuel Sharp d. March 10, 1866. Children of Samuel and 
Mary (Giffen) Sharp: 

i Elizabeth Jane, b. May 28, 1814. 

ii Sarah Lavinia, b. April 18, 1815. 

iii Margaret, b. June 6, 1816. 

iv Catherine, b. Feb. 26, 1819. 

V Samuel, b. May 8, 1820, m. probably in 1841, Sarah 
Rebecca, dau. of Hon. Samuel and Elizabeth (Gesner) 
Chipman, b. Sept. 9, 1820. 

vi Robert, Jr., b. May 9, 1822. 
Children of Samuel and Sarah (Starr) Sharp: 

vii Joseph Starr, b. April 22, 1830, d. June 20, 1837. 

viii Joanna, b. Oct. 9, 1831. 

ix Susan, b. May 1, 1832. 

X Emma, b. June 28, 1835. 

xi Fanny B., b. Aug. 20, 1837, d. March 5, 1838. 

xii Augusta, b. April 9, 1839. 
In Cornwallis, June 25, 1812, John N. Marshman, son of William 
and Jane Marshman, was m. to Jane, dau. of Robert Sharp. 



THE SHAW FAMILY 

The Shaw family is primarily an Annapolis county family. It 
was founded in Annapolis by Moses Shaw, a native of Massachusetts, 
who, probably about 1760, received a grant of land at Lower Gran- 
ville. His son, David, b. April 9, 1770, m. Desiah Phinney, and d. 
in Pleasant Valley, Berwick, Feb. 14, 1840. In 1810, or '11 he re- 
moved from Phinney Mountain, Annapolis county, to Berwick ' ' into 
a small log house, then completely shut in by the forest." He 
had in all 12 children. See the History of Annapolis. A writer 
in one of the local newspapers of the county a few years ago says 
of David Shaw: 

"His offspring are numerous and prosperous, now numbering 



FAMILY SKETCHES 817 

about 224. Three of his grandsons arc baptist ministers and one 
grand-daughter is the wife of Rev. Alfred Chipman, who was one 
of the first teachers of Acadia Seminary. Another grand-daughter 
has been for many years a missionary in China, and a grandson was 
several years a missionary in India. A score of his great-grand chil- 
dren have been enrolled as teachers, some of whom are filling im- 
portant educational stations. I remember his son Sidney as a large 
man, with a very large heart, who when he 'said grace,' bowed his 
high head almost to the table. In his boyhood his father sent him 
to a mill in Wilmot with a grist, and when returning he fell in 
with Mr. Preston, a very black and very eloquent colored Baptist 
preacher, whom he invited to accompany him home. When they 
arrived there, the family had all retired for the night. Sidney told 
his mother that a colored man had come home with him and wanted 
supper. The response was, 'if you have brought a nigger home, you 
may look after him yourself.' Mr. Preston overheard the answer, 
and as shrewd as he was eloquent, at once began singing with melt- 
ing sweetness one of the old time revival hymns. That was enough 
for Mrs. Shaw, her heart relented, and she arose and with gladness 
and genuine old fashioned hospitality, ministered to the colored 
man's needs. The arrival in the wilderness neighborhood, in those 
early days, of such a man, was a great event, and 
created a good deal of sensation. Word was circulated 
the next day that he would preach at Mr. Shaw's 
in the evening. He remained in the valley for several 
weeks, preaching from house to house, and a goodly number exper- 
ienced religion and were baptized by Father Manning at Canard. 
They were received into the First Cornwallis Church and with others 
were dismissed from that church on the 9th of January, 1828, and 
organized into what is now the Berwick Baptist Church." 

There was another Shaw family in Falmouth, Hants county, who 
intermarried with the Elder family, but its genealogy remains yet 
to be made out. Of this family was Dr. Henri Shaw, who m. Martha 
Davis, and had a family born in Kentville, where Dr. Shaw was long 
a leading physician. He is buried in Oak Grove cemetery. 



818 KING'S COUNTY 

THE SHEFFIELD FAMILY 

The Sheffield family was foimded in King's Comity by Capt. 
Amos Sheffield, the Cornwallis grantee, a descendant of lehabod Shef- 
field, the ancestor of all the Rhode Island Sheffields. It is possible, 
but not certain, that Amos Sheffield came to Cornwallis from Tiver- 
ton, R. I,, and he may have been a son or grandson of Amos and 
Sarah Sheffield, who were m. April 25, 1709. He m. Mary Harring- 
ton, and his children that we know of were : 

i Ruth, b. April 22, 1762, m. March 13, 1783, to William 
Baxter, M. D., and had 3 children. 

ii Elizabeth, b. May 26, 1764. 

iii Stephen, b. Aug. 10, 1766, m. Rachel Cunnabell (who was 
m. (2) to James Newcomb) and had a son, John, who 
m. Jan. 10, 1812, Asenath, dau. of John, M. P. P., and 
Prudence (Eaton) Wells, b. Sept. 7, 1799 ; and prob- 
ably a son, Amos, who m. Prudence Wells, sister of 
Asenath, b. March 30, 1806. John and Asenath 
(Wells) Sheffield had children: Thomas, b. Nov, 4, 
1823; Prudence Sophia, b. Oct. 19, 1828, m. Jan. 30, 
1856, to George Garland Starr, of Pernambuco; 
Stephen, b. March 16, 1831 ; Mary Elizabeth, b. April 
10, 1832. Mrs. Rachel (Cunnabell) Sheffield was mar- 
ried (2) to James Newcomb, and had a dau. Mary 
Newcomb, b. Feb. 8, 1808, m. (1) to John Manning, 
of Falmouth, (2) as his 2nd wife, to Daniel Moore, 
M. P. P., of Kentville. 

iv Amos, Jr., b. Feb. 10, 1771, m. Jan. 1, 1795, Elizabeth, dau. 
of Benjamin and Sarah (Post) Belcher, b. March 15, 
1772. Children : William ; John, d. in New Orleans ; 
Benjamin, d. in Aylesford; Mary, m. March 9, 1816, 
to William Northrup, son of Gould and Elizabeth 
Northrup, and d. in Truro, N. S., about 1870 ; Gideon, 
m. Lavinia, dau. of Walter Reid, and d. in St. 
Stephen, N. B. ; Aaron Atwood, m. Mary, dau. of 
Enoch Steadman. 

Dr. Brechin's manuscript notes give the marriage, June 24, 1784, 
of a Ruth Sheffield, daughter of Joseph, of Rhode Island, to John 
Belcher. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 819 

THE SHERMAN FAMILY 

The Sherman family of King's County, a branch of the well 
known Rhode Island family of that name, was founded here by Col. 
Jonathan Sherman, Jr., a son of Jonathan and Mary (Card) Sher- 
man, of South Kingston, R. I., who was b. Oct, 14, 1731, Col, Sher- 
man had brothers, Gideon and Robert, and sisters, Abigail and 
Mary, He m, at South Kingston (by Rev. Samuel Albro), May 16, 
1768, Sarah Harrington, of North Kingston, dau, of Stephen and 
Elizabeth Harrington, and sister of Stephen, Jr,, the Cornwallis 
grantee. His name first appears in the Cornwallis records in Oct., 
1770, at which time he bought land from James Mather. He built 
in Upper Canard the gambrel-roofed house afterward owned and 
occupied by William Belcher. He brought with him to Cornwallis, 
two slaves. He worshipped at St, John's Church, Cornwallis, but is 
buried in the cemetery at Upper Canard. He d. July 4, 1810; his 
wife d. after March 5, 1811. Children : 

i Sarah, m. to Sweet. 

ii Gideon, b. 1769, drowned in 1789, " at 20 years of age, ' ' in 
' ' crossing Partridge Island river, on horseback. ' ' On 
his death his 1st cousin, Stephen Harrington, of 
Parrsborough, wrote some lines, which Dr. Brechin 
has left among his notes on Cornwallis families, 
iii A child who d. young. 



THE SHREVE FAMILY 

The Rev. Thomas Shreve, the first Anglican clergyman settled in 
Parrsborough was b. probably in New Jersey, and was graduated 
B. A. at King's College (Columbia), New York, in 1773, M. A. in 
1776. He began to study for Holy Orders, but when the Revolution 
broke out he was commissioned Ensign, his commission, signed by 
General Howe, being dated Sept, 23, 1776. He was commissioned 
Lieut, in the Prince of Wales American Volunteers, April 25, 1782, 
this commission being signed by Sir Henry Clinton, He was later 



820 KING'S COUNTY 

commissioned Captain, and his descendants have copies of military- 
accounts signed by him as Captain, when transferring his company 
to Capt, Clowes. When he retired from the army he was given half 
pay, Lord Palmerston signing the warrant. After his death his 
widow received a pension. He was ordered Deacon by Beilby Por- 
teous, Bishop of Chester (appointed Bishop of London on St. 
Mark's Day, April 25, 1787), and was ordained Priest, June 3, 1787, 
by James, Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry, at the request of the 
Bishop of London. He was then licensed, June 6, 1787, by Eobert, 
Bishop of London, ''to perform the ministerial office of a Priest at 
Parrsborough, in Nova Scotia, in North America." For twenty years 
he remained at Parrsborough, but Aug. 13, 1807, was instituted by 
Charles, Bishop of Nova Scotia, to the cure of Lunenburg, of which 
he became the first rector. He d. at Lunenburg, Aug. 21, 1816, Rev. 
Thomas Shreve m. (1) in New York City, April 20, 1777 (license is- 
sued April 18), Catharine, daughter (probably youngest daughter) 
of Hon. Lewis Morris Ashfield, of Shrewsbury, N. J., a member of 
the N. J. Council, and a relative of Lewis Morris, one of the signers 
of the Declaration of Independence. Mrs. Shreve d. in 1789, having 
borne her husband three daughters: Mary, b. Aug. 15, 1778, d. 
young; Elizabeth Dayrell, b. Jan. 9, 1780; Catharine Morris Ashfield, 
b. Dec. 15, 1781. Mr. Shreve m. (2) in Parrsborough, April 30, 
1792, Abigail, dau. of Antill Gallop, of the Connecticut Gallop or 
Gallup family, Government Lispector of Fisheries at Parrsborough, 
who survived her husband many years, dying at the rectory in 
Chester, N. S., at the home of her son, James, April 1, 1849. 
Children by 2nd marriage : 

i Thomas, b. Oct. 29, 1793, d. Dec. 23, 1811, a Captain R. N. 

ii Caleb Antill, b. Feb. 20, 1796, d. Feb. 24, 1848, a teacher. 

iii Rebecca, b. July 26, 1797, d. young. 

iv Rev. James, b. Nov. 10, probably 1799, Rector of Chester 
and of Dartmouth, N. S. 

V Mary Ann, b. Aug. 8, 1801, m. to Jacobs, 

vi Martha Johnson, b. May 28, 1803, m. to Jarvis. 

vii Lucy Wollenhaupt, b. Aug. 18, 1805, m. to Morris. 

viii Rev. Charles Jessen, b. April 9, 1808, Rector of Guys- 
borough and of Chester, N. S., m. Harriet Hartshorne. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 821 

and was the father of the Rev, Richmond Shreve, 
D. D. 
ix Sophia Wood, b. April 27, 1810, d. in 1839. 

The Rev. Thomas Shreve 's grandson, the Rev. Canon Richmond 

Shreve, D. D., son of Charles Jessen and Harriet (Hartshorne) 

Shreve, was ordered Deacon in 1874, and ordained Priest in 1875 

(by Bishop Binney), and has been successively Curate of St. 

George's, Halifax, Rector of St. John's, Cornwallis, 1876-79, Curate 

of Holy Trinity, Yarmouth, for 18 years, a Priest of the American 

Church, and since 1902 Rector of Sherbrooke, Diocese of Quebec. He 

is also Canon of Quebec Cathedral. He m. in 1874, Mary Catherine, 

dau. of Richard Hocken, Esq., merchant at Chatham, N. B., and 

has two sons and two daughters. The Shreve or Sheriff family 

came first to Portsmouth, R. I., from which colony one of them, 

Caleb, removed to Shrewsbury, N. J. The ancestry of Rev. Thomas 

Shreve is: Thomas (who lived in New York), Thomas, Caleb, 

Thomas. See Shreve Genealogy. 



THE SKINNER FAMILY 

The Skinner family in King 's County was founded here by Charles 
Skinner, who m. at Passamaquaddy, Nov. 24, 1774, Sarah, dau. ot 
Samuel and Sarah Osbom, it is said, originally from Martha's Vine- 
yard. From the Loomis Genealogy, pp. Ill, 116, we find reason to 
believe that Charles Skinner was a son of Deacon Aaron and Eunice 
(Taintor) Skinner, of Colchester, Conn., and was b. in Colchester, 
Jan. 3, 1748. His children's births, as well as his own marriage, are 
recorded on the Cornwallis Town Book. Children : 

i Charles, Jr., b. Oct. 9, 1775, m. Corbet, and d. young. 

ii Alfred, b. June 20, 1778, m. March 17, 1803, Abigail, dau. 
of Amasa and Roxana (Cone) Bigelow. Their eldest 
child was Ann, who became the wife of Ebenezer Fos- 
ter Woodworth, b. in 1802. They had in all 12 chil- 
dren. 

iii Eunice, b, Jan. 31, 1780, m. to Rev. George Dimock. 

iv Rebecca, b. Dec. 22, 1781, m. June 25, 1801, to Rev. Ed- 
ward Manning. 

V Lavinia, b. Jan. 27, 1784, m. in Fredericton, N. B., March 



822 KING'S COUNTY 

9, 1786, to Reuben Bigelow. She d. at Antigonish, 
N. S., May 9, 1874. 

vi Ann, b. March 9, 1786, m. to Thomas Lyons. 

vii Mary, b. Dee. 29, 1787, m. to Benjamin Rockwell. 

viii Elizabeth, b. Nov. 11, 1789, m. to Robert Lyons. 

ix William, b. Dec. 13, 1791, m. Lois White, dau. of Timothy 
White and had at least 5 children. 

X Sarah, b. Dec. 30, 1793, d. unm., aged about 60, 

xi Abigail, b. April 15, 1796, m. to Henry Marchant, son of 
William and Elizabeth Marchant. 

xii David, b. Feb. 6, 1798, m. Jan. 17, 1821, Ann, dau. of Wil- 
liam and Elizabeth Marchant, and had children : Wil- 
liam Marchant, b. March 20, 1822; Leander, b. May 
17, 1824; Love, b. April 3, 1826; Elizabeth; David; 
George. 

xiii Joseph Churchill, b. Feb. 16, 1800, m. Elizabeth Chase, and 
had a son, William Allen, b. Jan. 26, 1822, who had 
at least 7 children. 

xiv Samuel, b. March 16, 1802, m. probably Elizabeth Gouldin, 
dau. of Charles Gouldin. 

XV Benjamin, b. Dec. 22, 1803, d. in infancy. 
The Skinner family has been more prominent in St. John, N. B., 
than anywhere else in the Maritime Provinces. 



THE SPINNEY FAMILY 

Joseph Spinney was a grantee in Aylesford, Aug. 30, 1783, and a 
Joseph Spinney, son of Samuel and Elizabeth, of Granville, Anna- 
polis county, m. in Aylesford, Oct. 5, 1797, Sarah Beech. They had 
children: Abraham, b. Sept. 19, 1798; Samuel, b. Nov. 22, 1802; 
Benaiah, b. July 21, 1805; Mary, b. May 7, 1807; Elijah, b. Sept. 4, 
1809 ; James, b. Nov. 4, 1811 ; Cyrena Ann, b. July 4, 1813 ; William, 
b. Sept. 9, 1815 ; Charlotte, b. Sept. 9, 1817 ; Sarah Elizabeth, b. Aug. 
26, 1819 ; John, b. Feb. 3, 1822. 

From the records of Aylesford we also learn that a Saonuel 
Spinney, undoubtedly brother of Joseph, m. Dec. 30, 1795, Eliza- 
beth Beech and had children : Isaac, b. Aug. 4, 1797 ; Jacob, b. Nov. 
15, 1799 ; Sarah, b. Nov. 6, 1801 ; Eliza, b. Aug. 1, 1804 ; Eunice, b. 
Jan. 8, 1807 ; Jane, b. Nov. 8, 1810 ; Elisha, b. Sept. 24, 1811 ; Inger- 
son, b. Oct. 18, 1813 ; Caroline, b. Ap^il 17, 1816 ; Henry, b. May 5, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 823 

1819; Catherine Inglis, b. May 24, 1822; Amret (?), b. June 5, 1825. 
A slight sketch of the Spinney family will be found in the Calnek- 
Savary History of Annapolis, pp. 604, 5. 



THE STAIRS FAMILY 

The Stairs family of Halifax, founded by John and Joanna (Stay- 
ner) Stairs, was conspicuously represented in the province in the 
third generation by Hon. William James Stairs, b. Sept. 24, 1819, 
and his brother, John Stairs, b. April 1, 1823, their parents being 
William and Margaret (Wiseman) Stairs, who were m. May 23, 1814. 
Sisters of William James and John Stairs were : Margaret Wiseman, 
who became the 1st wife of Hon. Alfred Gilpin Jones, lately Gov- 
ernor of Nova Scotia; Helen Sophia, wife of Robert Morrow; and 
Anna Marshall, wife of John Duffus. 

Hon. William James^ Stairs, M. L. C, of Halifax, m. June 16, 1845, 
Susan, dau. of John and Mary Anne (Duffus) Morrow, b. Oct. 21, 
1822. He d. in Halifax, deeply lamented, Feb. 27, 1906. Children : 

i John Fitzwilliam, b. Jan. 19, 1848, m. Charlotte Jane, dau. 
of James and Jane Pogo, of Pictou. 

ii Mary Anne, b. Sept. 20, 1849, m. to Charles Macdonald, 
and d. July 24, 1883. 

iii James Wiseman, b. May 15, 1851, m. Jane Macdonald. 

iv Margaret Wiseman, m. June 16, 1880, to Rev. Alfred John 
Townend, sometime Chaplain to the forces at Halifax. 

V George, b. Feb. 29, 1856, m. Oct. 1, 1884, Helen MacKenzie. 

vi Herbert, b. March 21, 1859, removed to Cornwallis and m. 
there, Sept. 21, 1881, Sarah Elizabeth, 4th daughter 
of Leander and Paulina (Starr) Eaton. Children: 
Edith; Mary Macdonald; Alice Eaton; William Her- 
bert. 

vii Gavin Lang, b. Sept, 21, 1861, m. in December, 1885, EUie 
Cox. 



FIRST STARR FAMILY 

Among the most important of the New England planters of the 
county were the brothers, Major Samuel and David Starr. They 



824 KING'S COUNTY 

were sons of Samuel (Jonathan, Samuel, Dr. Thomas, Dr. Comfort) 
and his wife, Ann (Bushnell) Starr, of Norwich, Conn., and descend- 
ants of the renowned William Brewster of the Mayflower. They 
were born in Norwich, Samuel, Sept. 2, 1728, David, Oct. 16, 1742. 

Major Samueli Starr m. (1), in Norwich, Nov. 19, 1749, 
Abigail, dau. of Capt. John and Sarah (Abell) Leffingwell, of Nor- 
wich, b. Nov. 3, 1725, d. in Nova Scotia, Feb. 2, 1768. He m. (2), 
May 22, 1768, Elizabeth, dau. of Benjamin and Elizabeth Kinsman, 
who d. May 12, 1784. He m. (3), May 28, 1785, Mrs. Miriam (Inger- 
soll) Dickson, dau. of Thomas and Sarah (Dewey) Ingersoll, and 
widow of Charles Dickson, of Colchester, Conn., and Horton, N. S., 
b. in Westfield, Mass., Nov. 4, 1723. Samuel Starr was buried at 
Starr's Point, Cornwallis, Aug. 26, 1799. 

Children by 1st marriage : 

i Abigail, b. Jan. 20 or 24, 1751, m. to Timothy McCartney, 

but left no issue, 
ii Hannah, b. Nov. 20, 1752, m. to Benjamin, son of James 

and Grace Fox, and had a dau. Eunice, b. Dec. 2, 

1787, m. to James Woodworth. 
iii John, b. Dec. 5 or 12, 1754, d. young, 
iv Joseph, b. Sept. 29, 1757, m. Joanna Starr. 

Josephs Starr (Major Samuel^), b. Sept. 29, 1757, m. in Norwich, 
Conn., June 1, 1786, his 1st cousin, Joanna, dau. of Jonathan and 
Sarah (Leffingwell) Starr, b. July 13, 1758, d. Aug. 29, 1847. He d. 
July 8, 1840. Children : 

i Charles, b. Jan. 4, 1788. 

ii Lavinia, b. Feb. 28, 1789, m. to her 1st cousin once re- 
moved, David Starr (David), of Halifax. 

iii Samuel, b. Oct. 28, 1790, m. (1) Susanna Cox, (2) Mrs. 
Abigail (Denison) Willett. 

iv Sarah, b. May 14, 1793, m. Oct. 29, 1828, as his 2nd wife, 
Samuel, son of Robert and Elizabeth (Dunbar) 
Sharp, b. in 1779, at Machias, Me., and had 6 chil- 
dren. She d. April 14, 1851. He d. March 10, 1866. 

V Abigail, b. Oct. 10, 1795, m. Oct. 6, 1832, to Rev. Arthur 
McNutt, son of Martin and Rebecca (Stewart) Mc- 
Nutt, and had 2 children. 

vi Christopher, b. Aug. 21, 1797, m. about 1835, at Pernam- 
buco, Brazil, Mrs. Susanna Howard Harrington, an 



FAMILY SKETCHES 825 

Englishwoman, who d. Dec. 2, 1853. He d. in Eng- 
land, March 3, 1870. They had 1 son, d. young. 

vii Col. Richard, b. April 28, 1799, m. Tamar Troop. 

viii Joseph Henry, b. Nov. 4, 1802, d. Aug. 11, 1816. 

SamueP Starr (Joseph^ Major Samueli), b. Oct. 28, 1790, m. (1) 
June 26, 1822. Susannah, dau. of Capt. Harry and Susannah (Eaton) 
Cox, b. March 17, 1804, d. March 23, 1852, (2) June 20, 1855, Mrs. 
Abigail (Denison) Willett, b. April 20, 1808. Children: 

i Paulina, b. July 29, 1823, m. May 22, 1850, to Leander, son 
to Ward and Deborah (Eaton) Eaton, and had 8 
children. See the Eaton Family. 

ii George Garland, b. April 14, 1825, m. (1) Jan. 30, 1856, 
Prudence Sophia, dau, of John and Asenath (Wells) 
Sheffield, b. Dec. 19, 1828, d. July 27, 1857, (2) May 
5, 1859, Margaret, dau, of James and Caroline Mary 
(Dudman) Stewart, of Bahia. He lived in Pernam- 
buco, Brazil. He had 4 children, the eldest of whom 
(by his 1st marriage) was Mary Asenath, m. to Ed- 
ward Manning, son of Mayhew and Eunice (Rand) 
Beckwith, of Canning. 

iii Thomas Henry, b. Feb. 28, 1827, m. Nov. 5, 1851, Hannah, 
dau, of James and Hannah (Steimson) Hilton, m. at 
Hull, England, Oct. 19, 1825, and had 6 children. 

iv Mary Sophia, b. Feb. 7, 1829, m. July 31, 1854, to Col 
David Hosterman Clark, son of James Stewart and 
Harriet (Etter) Clark, b. May 11, 1829, d. June 25, 
1872, and had 3 children 

V Major John Edward, b. Jan. 14, 1831, m. Jan. 25, 1860, 
Martha, dau. of Ward and Deborah (Eaton) Eaton, 
b. March 28, 1828. They had 4 children : John Rufus, 
b. Dec. 13, I860; Ella, b. May 11, 1862, d. May 12, 
1864 ; Alice Augusuta, b. Sept. 18, 1865 ; George Her- 
bert, b. Feb. 14, 1873, m. Katherine Allison Mc- 
Latchy. See the Johnstone Family for John Rufus 
Starr. 

vi Joseph, b. Feb. 3, 1833, m. Mrs. Lockwood. 

vii Martha, b. March 11, 1836, m. Dec. 7, 1858, to Gilbert, son 
of Gilbert and Nancy (Clark) Fowler, b. 1830, and 
had 2 children. 

Col. Richard^ Starr (Joseph^, Major SamueP), b. April 28, 1799, 

m. Sept. 15, 1829, Tamar, dau. of Joseph and Sarah (Rice) Troop, 
b. at Bridgetown, N. S., April 14, 1804. Children : 



826 KING'S COUNTY 

i Major Robert William, b. Sept. 11, 1830, m. March 7, 1860, 
Sarah Elizabeth, dau, of Clement Horton and Mary 
Jane (Starr) Belcher, and had children: Arthur 
Clark ; Robert William, Jr. ; Florence Belcher ; Percy 
George; Gladys Mary. 

ii Lavinia, b. June 30, 1832, d. March 28, 1846. 

iii Sarah Jane, b. Sept. 14, 1834, d. April 17, 1836. 

iv Mary Jane, m. Sept. 16, 1857, Thomas Roberts, Jr., son of 
Thomas Roberts and Mercy Ann (Barnaby) Pattillo, 
b. at Liverpool, N. S., Sept. 19, 1833, and had 9 chil- 
dren, one of whom, Thomas Starr Pattillo, is a prom- 
inent wholesale merchant at Truro, N. S. 

V Henrietta Sophia, b. Sept. 15, 1839, d. Feb. 4, 1843, 

vi Joseph Christopher, m. (1) Annie Sophia, dau. of Wm. 
Henry, M. P., and Sophia (Cogswell) Chipman, who 
d. Jan. 31, 1877. 

vii Sarah Eliza, m. to Ross, son of Wm. Henry, M. P., and 
Sophia (Cogswell) Chipman, of Cornwallis. 

viii Charles Richard Henry, m. Eva, dau. of Rev. Samuel and 
Florence (Haire) Richardson. 

ix David Arthur, b. Oct. 2, 1849, d. Oct. 12, 1856. 

One of the most notable members of the Starr family in Nova 
Scotia at the present time is Major Robert William Starr, whose 
genealogical record is given above. For many years he has been active 
in all matters pertaining to the welfare of the county, especially in 
fruit growing. To the science of this industry he has given scholarly 
attention, and his judgment in it carries weight. He has been prom- 
inent in the militia, and his knowledge of the general history of the 
county is accurate and wide. Without his kindly co-operation the 
History of King's would have lacked some important details. 



SECOND STARR FAMILY 

David^ Starr, (Samuel, Jonathan, Dr. Thomas, Dr. Comfort), 
b. in Norwich, Conn., Oct. 16, 1742, m. in Cornwallis, Aug. 5, 1770, 
Susanna, dau. of Henry and Martha Potter, b. in Halifax, in April, 
1752, d. in Cornwallis, Nov. 5, 1817. He d. Oct. 29, 1831, and with 
his wife is buried in the small burying ground at Starr's Point, 
where also his brother Samuel lies. Whether Mrs. David Starr was 



FAMILY SKETCHES 827 

an only child we do not know, but we have no record of any other 
child of Henry and Martha Potter, The Potters are believed to 
have come from England to Halifax soon after the settling of that 
town, some time later removing to Cornwallis. Henry and Susanna 
Potter are also buried at Starr's Point. Children: 

i Samuel, b. Aug. 5, 1771, m. Lydia DeWolf. 

ii Henry, twin with Samuel, d. in 1779. 

iii Elizabeth, b. Dec. 1, 1773, m. to Augustus Willoughby 
See the Willoughby Family. 

iv Col. John, M. P. P., b. Feb. 20, 1775, m. Desiah Gore, and 
foimded the chief Halifax Starr family. 

V Ann, b. Dec. 12, or Sept. 17, 1776, m. as his 2nd wife, July 
22, 1812, to Walter, son of Ezra and Mary (Watrous) 
Reid, b. Feb. 23, 1770. They had one daughter, Har- 
riet Sophia Reid, b. Sept. 16, 1815, m. to Wm. Henry 
Lyons. 

vi Sarah, b. Nov. 1, 1778, m. (1) to Benjamin Belcher, (2) 
to Walter Carroll Manning. See Belcher Family 
and Manning Family. 

vii Joseph, b. Feb. 16, 1781, m. (1) Mary Gore, (2) Mrs. Mar- 
garet Maria (DeWolf) Calkin. 

viii Hannah, b. March 1, 1783, buried Oct. 4, 1784. 

ix Susannah, b. July 1, 1785, m. in March, 1811, Rev. James 
Elnowlan, b. in Ireland, in 1776, d. in Halifax, in 
1843. She d. in Feb., 1869. The Knowlans had 8 
children : 

X David, b. April 15, 1787, m. Lavinia Starr, dau. of his 1st 
cousin Joseph. 

xi William, b. March 2, 1789, m. Jan. 31, 1815, Harriet, dau. 
of Frances and Bathsheba (Ruggles) Hutchinson, b. 
at Wilmot, N. S. They had 5 children. 

xii James, b. Aug. 3, 1791, m. May 19, 1813, Nancy, dau. of 
Miner and Martha (Walker) Huntington, b. at Yar- 
mouth, N. S., April 11, 1794, d. June 1, 1863. He d. 
Jan. 7, 1863. They had 9 children. 

xiii Daniel, b. March 27, 1795, m. Sarah Alice DeWolf. 

SamueP Starr (David^), b. Aug. 5, 1771, m. probably in 1794, 
Lydia, youngest dau. of Jehiel and Phebe (Cobb) DeWolf, b. in 1768, 
d. Jan. 26, 1850, a descendant of John Howland and John Tillie, of 
the Mayflower. Samuel Starr d. in Jamaica, West Indies, Aug. 8, 
1801, aged only 30, and is buried in Jamaica. Children : 



828 KING'S COUNTY 

i Maria, b. Jan, 1, 1795. 
ii Henry, b. Dec. 15, 1796. 

Of these children, Henry, the youngest went with Capt. Thomas 
Ratchford, of Parrsborough, the husband of his 1st cousin, Caro- 
line Sophia (DeWolf) Ratchford, dau. of Daniel DeWolf, to Ja- 
maica, W. I., on a voyage in 1822, and that year strangely died in 
Jamaica, as his father had done about twenty-one years before. 
Maria Starr (the author's grandmother) in her nineteenth year, 
June 19, 1813, was m. by Rev. Robert Norris, Rector of St. John's 
church, Cornwallis, to Otho Hamilton, eldest son of Henry Hamil- 
ton, who had come to New England from Scotland shortly before 
the Revolutionary War. Otho Hamilton's mother was Eunice Lord, 
a member of a well known New England family, intermarried with 
the Wentworth and other important families, and descended from 
the Frosts. Otho Hamilton came to Nova Scotia shortly before his 
marriage, he died in Kentville, May 21, 1831, leaving seven chil- 
dren, the youngest of whom was less than three years old. Of his 
few living descendants or the descendants of his father, none bear 
the Hamilton name. He was entirely unrelated to the Hamilton 
family of Horton, and the only Hamiltons ever in Nova Scotia to 
whom he could have been related were Lieut.-Col. Otho Hamilton, 
and his sons Captain John and Lieut-Col. Otho, 2nd, all of whom 
were in the 40th Regiment at Annapolis Royal, afterward removing 
to Great Britian, where they died. See the author's monographs on 
the Olivestob Hamiltons, and Lieut.-Col. Otho Hamilton, his sons 
Capt. John and Lieut.-Col. Otho, 2nd, and his grandson, Sir Ralph 
Hamilton, Kt. Mrs. Maria (Starr) Hamilton died Jan. 3, 1872. 
Children : 

i Susan, b. March 10, 1814, d. unm., Feb. 17, 1892. 

ii Minetta Bath, b. March 15, 1816, d. unm., Feb. 13, 1892. 

iii Henry Starr, b. Aug. 18, 1818, d. unum.. May 9, 1867. 

iv Margaret Maria, b. Feb. 6, 1821, m. Feb. 19, 1857, to Bren- 
ton Halliburton Harris, 5th son of Hon. James Delap, 
M. L. C, and Wilhelmina "Wemyss (Campbell) Har- 
ris, and d. s. p., Dec. 1, 1907. 

V Otho, Jr., b. Aug. 2, 1823, d. j. p., in Boston, Mass., March 
24, 1826, and is buried in Salem, Mass. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 829 

vi Josephine Collins, b. Dec. 11, 1826, m. (1) Dec. 1, 1849, to 
John Kufus Eaton, (2) to Rev. David Stuart Ham- 
ilton, D. C. L., and was the mother of Grace Hun- 
newell (Eaton), widow of Wilford Henry Chipman. 
of Kentville ; Harold Harris Hamilton of New York ; 
Mary Stuart Hamilton, Janet Gordon Hamilton, and 
Victor Prescott Hamilton. 

vii Anna Augusta Willoughby, b. Sept. 11, 1828, m. to Wil- 
liam Eaton and had children. Rev. Arthur Went- 
worth Hamilton Eaton, D. C L. ; Francis Herbert 
Eaton, D. C. L. ; Anna Morton Eaton, m. to George 
Albert Layton, and has one son, Francis Paul Hamil- 
ton Layton, B. A., LL. B. ; Rufus William Eaton, m. 
Anna Laurie Sutherland, and has children, Ken- 
neth Sutherland, William Ronald, and Jean Hamil- 
ton; Harry Havelock Eaton; Leslie Seymour Eaton 
m. Augusta Billing Thorne, and has daughters, Emily 
Augusta Thorne, and Helen Wentworth Hamilton; 
and Emily Maria Hamilton Eaton, who died young. 

Col. John. Starr2, m P. P., b. Feb. 20, 1775, early settled in Hali- 
fax, where he became one of the wealthiest merchants. He received 
his commission as Colonel of the 3rd Halifax Regiment, April 12, 
1824. "When absent in England in 1827, he was elected a member 
of the House of Assembly, by his native county of King's." He 
owned in Halifax the property known as Poplar Grove, once owned 
by Sir John Wentworth. He registered arms in London, and these 
are cut on his tombstone. He m. Dec. 28, 1797, Desiah, dau. of 
Moses, Jr., and Mary (Newcomb) Gore, b. May 23, 1780, who d. in 
Horton, May 15, 1843. He d. in Halifax, Dee. 30, 1827. Children : 

i Margaret Sophia, b. Dec. 21, d. Dec. 23, 1798. 

ii Margaret Sophia, b. Jan. 3, 1800, m. May 30, 1821, to Hon. 
James, M. L. C, son of James and Mary (Crane) 
Ratchf ord, b. May 17, 1796. They had children : 
1. Sophia Caroline, b. July 15, 1823, m. Oct. 24, 1864, 
to Rev. Nathaniel Allen Coster, Rector of Richibucto, 
N. B., who d. Feb. 4, 1879; 2. Mary Eliza, b. June 
13, 1827, d. Nov. 25, 1841. 

iii John Leander, b. Oct. 30, d. Nov. 25, 1841. 

iv Hon. John Leander, M. L. C, b. Oct. 25, 1802, m. (1) Nov. 
1, 1823, Mary Sophia, dau. of James and Mary 
(Crane) Ratchf ord, b. Oct. 30, 1804, d. Dec. 17, 1829. 



830 KING'S COUNTY 

He m. (2), in New York, Dee. 22, 1830, Frances Bar- 
berie, dau. of William and Catharine Throckmorton, 
d. Jan. 5, 1878. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery, 
Brooklyn, N. Y. He was Colonel of the 3rd Regi- 
ment of Halifax militia, and acted successively as 
aide-de-camp to Gen.-Sir Colin Campbell, and to 
■ Lord Falkland, Governor of Nova Scotia. He was 
made a member of the Legislative Council in 1841. 
By his 1st wife, Hon. J. L. Starr had children : James 
Eatchford; Rupert Augustus; Mary Desiah. By his 
2nd wife he had : Mary Sophia, m. to De Verd 
Fischer, of Quebec; Kate Reading; Leander "William 
Van Hook ; Elizabeth Jane Throckmorton, m. to John 
Daggett Hunt, and has a son, John Leander Starr 
Hunt, a prominent lawyer in Mexico, and a dau., 
Elizabeth, wife of John DuFais, of New York city. 

V "William Joseph, b. Dec. 12, 1805, m. (1) in Bermuda, Nov. 
16, 1830, Matilda, dau. of Hon. Richard and Frances 
(Peniston) Peniston, b. Nov. 3, 1809, at Peniston 
Hall, Peniston, Bermuda, (2) Sept. 25, 1848, Mrs. 
Harriet (Ruggles) Bartlett, dau. of Timothy Rug- 
gles, M. P. P., of Bridgetown, N. S., and widow of 
Thomas Bartlett, b. Aug. 16, 1813, d. Jan. 1, 1877. 
Children by 1st marriage: Frances Amelia; Richard 
Peniston; John Leander; "William Frederick; Eliza 
Ratchford; Susan Jervis; Henry Jervis; Almira 
Christmas. 

vi Mary Eliza, b. Dec. 28, 1807, m. Oct. 17, 1826, to Elisha 
DeWolf, Jr., M. P. P. See DeWolf Family. She d. 
May 14, 1843. 

vii Susan Arabella, b. July 21, 1810, m. Jan. 12, 1835, to Ad- 
miral William Henry Jervis, R. N., b. Oct. 11, 1803, 
at ''Woodlands Lodge," New Forest, Hants, Eng., d. 
April 20, 1877. Children : Martha Mary ; Susan Ara- 
bella Harriet; Fanny Anne Cockburn; William 
Henry Edward Ricketts, Lieut. R. N., and afterwards 
clergyman of the Church of England; Dundas 
George. 

viii Frederick Augustus, b. Aug. 28, 1812, d. Nov. 3, 1817. 

ix Lucretia Jane, b. Aug. 11, 1814, d. Sept. 19, 1815. 

X Jane, b. and d. Sept. 2, 1817. 

xi Lucretia Jane, b. Nov. 2, 1818, m. June 5, 1838, to Hon. 
Judge Charles Young, son of Hon. John, M. P. P., 
and Agnes (Rennie Young, b, in Glasgow, Scotland, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 831 

April 30, 1812, a brother of Sir William Young, Kt. 
No children. 
Josephs, b. Feb. 16, 1781, also removed early to Halifax, where 

for many years he was a warden of St. Paul's Church. He m. (1) 
Feb. 25, 1804, Mary, dau, of Moses and Mary (Newcomb) Gore, b. 
Jan. 29, 1778, d. Aug. 19, 1838. He m. (2) April 4, 1843, Mrs. Mar- 
garet Maria (DeWolf) Calkin, dau. of Judge Elisha DeWolf, and 
widow of James Calkin, b. Sept. 22, 1793, d. May 16, 1862. 

Children by 1st marriage : 

i John Edward b. Feb. 4, 1805, m. Nov. 11, 1828, Mary Ann, 
dau. of James Kussell and Ann Louisa (Chipman) 
Lovett, b. Feb. 20, 1810, d. Jan. 2, 1877. Children: 
Rev. Joseph Herbert; Elizabeth Ann, m. to Douglas 
Nicholas Tucker, M. D., R. N.; Alida Ellen, m. to 
Frederick Newton Gisborne, C. E. ; James Edward ; 
Mary Gore, m. to Israel Longworth, Barrister, Truro ; 
James Lovett; Rev. Reginald Heber, T>. D., 
clergyman of the Anglican Church of Canada, and 
the Prot. Epis. Church of the U. S., now in New 
York city. 

ii Mary Jane, b. Dec. 19, 1806, m. June 6, 1826, to her 1st 
cousin, Clement Horton Belcher, b. March 5, 1801, d. 
May 23, 1869. She d. May 15, 1868. They had 8 
children. See the Belcher Family. 

iii Thomas Henry, b. Sept. 29, 1809, d. March 20, 1811. 

iv George Herbert, b. Dec. 26, 1812, banker of Halifax, m. 
Sept. 8, 1855, Mrs. Rebecca Allison Sawers, dau. of 
James Noble and Charlotte Louisa (Avery) Crane, of 
Horton, and widow of A. F. Sawers, M. D., b. Dec. 
16, 1817. By her 1st marriage Mrs. Starr had one 
daughter, Louise, m. to the Rev. Dr. Paisley, of 
Sackville, N. B., to Mr. Starr she bore no children. 

V David, b. April 15, 1787, also removed to Halifax and be- 
came a successful merchant. He m. Feb. 20, 1811, 
Lavinia, dau. of Joseph and Joanna (LefPingwell) 
Starr, of Cornwallis, b. Feb. 28, 1789, d. Nov. 6, 1858. 
See the First Starr Family. He d. in Halifax, Nov. 
20, 1857. His children were : Sarah Elizabeth, b. Oct. 
11, 1812, d. unm. April 20, 1840 ; Joanna, b. Feb. 29, 
1815, m. June 18, 1839. to Rev. Roland Morton, b. in 
Cornwallis, April 13, 1818, and had 5 children, the 
3rd of whom was Rev. Roland Arthur Dwight Mor- 



832 KING'S COUNTY 

ton; Mary Sophia, b. Nov. 11, 1816, d. unm.; Fanny 
Lavinia, b. July 17, 1819, m. June 14, 1843, to Rev. 
Samuel Dwight Rice, D. D., b. Sept. 11, 1815, and 
had 9 children; Harriet Augusta, b. March 20 1822, 
m. July 8, 1856, Rev. Charles Stewart, D. D., b. Feb. 
6, 1827, and had 4 children; David Henry, b. Aug. 
19, 1825, m. (1) May 25, 1853, Mary Starr, dau. of 
Joseph and Ann (Morton) Chase, of Cornwallis, (2), 
Eliza Jane Chase, sister of his 1st wife. He had 5 
children by his 2nd wife; John, b. Dec. 9, 1827, m. 
June 13, 1853, Mary Ann, dau. of Rev. Wm. and Ann 
(Perkins) Croscomb, and had 6 children, 
iv Thomas Ratchford, b. March 26, 1834, d. Aug. 5, 1835. 

DanieP Starr (David^), b. March 27, 1795, m. Sept. 3, 1825, Sarah 
Alice, dau. of Daniel and Lydia Kirtland (Harris) DeWolf, b. July 
29, 1802, d. Oct. 9, 1870. He was a merchant in Halifax, but July 
20, 1852, was appointed H. M. Vice-Consul at Portland, Me. This 
office he held until May 10, 1854. He d. Nov. 13, 1868. Children: 
ii Albert Chapin, b. Jan. 5, 1830, d. July 8, 1850. 
ill George Herbert, b. Dec. 30, 1831, m. Sept. 19, 1854, Ellen 

Goodwin, and had 2 children, 
iv Thomas Ratchford, b. March 26, 1834, d. Aug. 5, 1835. 
V Caroline Jane, b. July 28, 1836, m. Sept. 28, 1854, to Israel 
Thorndike Dana, M. D., of Portland, Me., son of 
Samuel and Henrietta (Bridge) Dana, b. at Marble- 
head, Mass., June 6, 1827, educated in Paris, France. 
She had children: Anna Harrington; Alice DeWolf; 
Samuel Bridge; William Lawrence, M. D. ; Israel 
Thorndike, Jr. ; Caroline Starr ; Matthew ; Henrietta 
Bridge; Francis William. Dr. Israel Thorndike Dana 
was a brother of Susan, wife of William Lawrence, 
M. D., of Longwood, Mass., and uncle of Rev. Arthur 
Lawrence, D. D., long Rector of Stockbridge, Mass., 
who recently died, 
vi Joseph, b. Nov. 30, 1839, m. June 1, 1872, Alice Elizabeth, 
dau. of James William and Elizabeth (Brown) Mer- 
kel, of Halifax. He d. s. p. 



THE STARRATT FAMILY 
Joseph Staratt b. probably in Granville, Annapolis county, of a 
Scotch family that seems to have started first in America, somewhere 



FAMILY SKETCHES 833 

in New England, was a son of William and (Webber) Starratt. 

He removed to Cornwallis and m. there, Feb. 18, 1801, Sarah, dau. of 
Israel Harding, and sister of Rev. Harris Harding and of Mrs. Joseph 
Allison. Children : 

i William. 

ii Joseph, d. unm. 

iii Margaret, d. unm. 

iv Sarah, m. to Robert W. Denison, son of James and La- 
vinia (Denison) Denison, brother of James A. Deni- 
son, who m. Louisa Viets, Eliza A. Denison, m. to Asa 
S. Angus, and Julia Lavinia Denison, m. to Benjamin 
H. Calkin. Robert and Sarah (Starratt) Denison had 
children, only one of whom it is believed was mar- 
ried. Robert Denison d. in Kentville, Dec. 23, 1861. 
For many years Mrs. Denison lived with her brother, 
Joseph Starratt in Church street, Cornwallis. See 
Calnek-Savary History of Annapolis. 



'^ THE STEADMAN FAMILY 

Among the well known Rhode Island families represented in King 's 
County are the Congdons, Sanfords, Sheffields, Shermans, Stead- 
mans, and Sweets. The founder of the Cornwallis family was John 
Steadman, son of Thomas and Hannah Steadman, b. in South 
Kingston, R. I., Sept. 21, 1725, m. in Shrewsbury, N. J., Jan. 29, 1746, 
Bethany Gray. (Dr. Brechin and the Chute Genealogies say Par- 
thenia Gracey, but the record above is taken from the South Kings- 
town Vital Records). He m. (2) Frances Congdon of North Kings- 
town, R. I. He was a surveyor, at one time lived in Long Island, 
N. Y., but in 1760 removed to King's County, where he assisted in 
laying out the township of Cornwallis, 

Children by 1st marriage : 

i Martha, m. in Cornwallis, Jan. 12, 1769, to Worden Beck- 

with. 
ii Parthenia, m. and went to the Southern States, 
iii Mary, m. and also went to the Southern States. 

Children by 2nd marriage : 

iv Benjamin, m. July 12, 1787, Sarah, dau. of Aaron and 



834 KING'S COUNTY 

Susanna (Edgarton) Cogswell, b. about 1768, but 
had no children. 
- y Enoch, m. Allison Cogswell, sister of Sarah. 

vi Hannah, b. Feb. 15, 1763, m. Sept. 22, 1814, to John N. Van 
Buskirk. See Dr. Brechin's notes. 

vii John, b. April 19, 1765, m. Hannah Harris, and lived in 
Cornwallis. Children : Hannah, b. April 11, 1793 ; 
Elizabeth, b. Jan. 23, 1795 ; Charles, b. April 6, 
1797 ; Thomas, b. March 9, 1799 ; James, b. March 4, 
1802 ; William, b. Aug. 2, 1804 ; Benjamin, b. Feb. 12, 
1807; Mary Ann, b. May 20, 1809; Susannah, b. July 
19, 1811 ; George Washington, b. Feb. 14, 1815. 

viii Elizabeth, b. Dec. 20, 1767, m. June 11, 1787, to Abraham 
Gesner, twin brother of Col, Henry Gesner, and had 
12 children. 

ix Thomas, b. Jan. 30, 1771, in Falmouth. 

X Sarah, b. Sept. 20, 1774. 

xi William, b. March 25, 1777-8, m. Nov. 18, 1803, Hannah 
Tatro Couch, and d. in Moncton, N. B., Nov. 18, 1854. 

xii James Congdon, b. June 2, 1781. 

Enoch^ Steadman (John^), m. Allison, dau. of Aaron and Susan- 
nah (Edgarton) Cogswell, b. probably about 1770. Children: 

i Benjamin, m. March 13, 1817, Mary Ann, dau. of James 
and Nancy (Manning) Eaton, b. May 3, 1796. Chil- 
dren: Eunice, b. Jan. 16, 1818; Enoch, b. June 3, 
1820; Nancy, b. April 1, 1822; Daniel, b. April 3, 
1826; Ruth, b. July 30, 1828, m. July 18, 1850, to Wil- 
liam, son of George and Eleanor (Sheffield) Harring- 
ton (and had children: Charles; Anna, m. (1) to 
Henry Lydiard, (2) to Brenton Halliburton Dodge, 
M. P. P. ; Fanny) ; Edward Manning, b. Aug. 30, 1832 ; 
Harriet, b. Aug. 24, 1834, m. June 5, 1856, to Eobert 
Harrington, brother of William (and had children: 
Ruth; Alice; William; Mary Blanche; Enoch Stead- 
man) ; Fanny, b. Aug. 26, 1838, m. as his 2nd wife, 
Oct. 14, 1885, to Frederick Webster, of Kentville, son 
of Dr. Wm. Bennett and Wilhelmina (Moore) Web- 
ster. Of this family, Enoch Steadman, b. June 3, 1820, 
became a prosperous business man in Boston and re- 
tired about 1880, with a comfortable fortune. He 
m. Abby Woodbury, of Boston, and had sons : Frank 
Elmer, d. young; Frederick Enoch Steadman, d. in 
Boston, a widower, in 1895, and was buried at Forest 



FAMILY SKETCHES 835 

Hills cemetery. The firm in Boston of which he was 
a member was Holt, Steadman & Co. 

ii Susannah, m. March 22, 1814, to Elisha Eaton, Jr., son of 
Elisha and Irene (Bliss) Eaton, a merchant in Corn- 
wallis, b. June 30, 1783. They had one son, David 
Owen Eaton, who d. unm. In 1811, Elisha Eaton 
and his brother-in-law, Benjamin Steadman, who m. 
Elisha 's cousin, Mary Ann Eaton, had p.ews in St. 
John's Church, Cornwallis. On the plan of the in- 
terior of the church, Mr. Eaton's two pews come di- 
rectly back of the Governor's pew, Mr. Steadman 's 
pew is on the right of the middle aisle, fourth from 
the front. 

iii Hannah, m. to Isaac Jackson, and had children : Sarah Al- 
lison ; Susannah ; Charles ; Enoch ; Joseph. 

iv Sarah, m. to Peter Pineo. 

V Fanny, m. to Benjamin Sheffield. 

vi Nancy, m. to George Cox, son of Capt. Harry and Susanna 
(Eaton) Cox, b. Jan. 20, 1798. 

vii Mary, m. to Aaron Sheffield. 

viii Daniel. 
An important member of this Steadman family was the Hon. 
Judge James Steadman, M. L. C, for New Brunswick. He was a son 
of William and Hannah Tatro (Couch) Steadman, and was m. March 
27, 1818. The Chute Genealogies contain much about the Stead- 
man Family. 



THE STEWART FAMILY 

The Stewart family of Horton was founded by two brothers, John 
McNeil and Luke Stewart, sons of Archibald and Susan (McNeil) 
Stewart, of Glasgow, Scotland, who had other children, Daniel, m. 
Janet Lyle, and Mary. Of the coming of John McNeil Stewart to 
Nova Scotia we have found the following account in print. John 
McNeil Stewart, the account says, with some others, had been 
forcibly impressed by a recruiting band into the British navy, and 
the ship on which he and his fellow sailors were thrust came to Pic- 
tou, Nova Scotia. In that harbour,, one day he and two or three other 
men jumped overboard and struck out for the shore. A boat pur- 
sued them, but Mr. Stewart, at least, reached the shore before he 



836 KING'S COUNTY 

was overtaken. On shore a kindly fellow Scotswoman named Cam- 
eron, covered him with a long cloak, and taking him into a house 
concealed him until his pursuers had gone back to the ship. Later 
he made his way to Horton, where he settled and where he soon 
married Elizabeth, dau. of Robert and Jane (Palmer) Laird. John 
McNeil and Elizabeth (Laird) Stewart had children : Mary ; Eleanor ; 
Robert Laird m. Elizabeth Patterson; William, m. (1) Rebecca Pat- 
terson, (2) Ruby Gould, (3) Emily Gould; Susan. 

Robert Laird^ Stewart (John McNeil^), m. Elizabeth Patterson. 
Children : 

i John Robert, m. Elizabeth Gilmore. Children: Daniel Ed- 
gar; Mabel Heartz; Arthur Dawson; Archibald 
Lyle; Robert William; Cassie Johnson; (Gordon Deni- 
son; Hector John; Paul Clinton. 

ii Janel Lyle. 

iii Dottie. 

iv Agenora. 

V James Wesley, m. Jane E. F. Green, and had one son, Karl 
Gordon. 

vi Kate Lillian. 

vii Albert Dawson. 

viii Calvin Bruce Livingston, m. (1) E. Dunsworth and had 
one child, Muriel Moody, (2) J. Newcomb, who bore 
him: Winifred Kathleen and Robert Lyle. 

William^ Stewart (John McNeil^) m. (1) Rebecca Patterson, who 
bore him a daughter, Harriet, (2) Ruby Gould, (3) Emily Gould, 
who bore him children: William Young, m. Sarah Alice Denison; 

Robert Laird, d. young; Robert Laird, 2d, m. Adeline ; Frank 

Gould, m. ; Stephen Gould, m. Cassie Armstrong; Charles Ed- 
ward, m. Florence ; Annie Mary; Walter Douglas; Albert Daw- 
son ; Jesse Laird ; John Laird ; Frederick Brown. 

Lukei Stewart m. Mary Walker. Children : Daniel ; John ; Luke, 
Jr.; James, and others. The information concerning the Stewart 
family has been kindly furnished by Miss Annie M. Stuart, of Kent- 
ville, Deputy Registrar of Deeds, from a chart made out for her by 
Mrs. R. R. Duncan, of Grand Pre. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 837 

THE STRONG FAMILY 

Stephen^ Strong, Jr., the Cornwallis grantee, a son of Stephen 
and Abigail (Buell) Strong, b. in Lebanon, Conn., Jan. 30, 1725, m. 
Elizabeth , and settled in Coventry, Conn., where his 1st (prob- 
ably six) children were born. He was a descendant of Elder John 
Strong, b. in Taunton, Eng., in 1605, who settled in Dorchester, 
Mass., in 1630, and founded one of the most important families in 
the United States. The Strong Family Genealogy does not trace the 
Cornwallis family, and we are not able to give a perfectly satisfac- 
tory sketch of it. Stephen Strong, Jr., received his grant of 1% 
shares of land in Cornwallis, July 21, 1761. Children of Stephen 
Strong, Jr. : 

i Lydia, b. April 13, 1748, m. (1) to Jonathan Rand, (2) 
Oct. 4, 1804, to Benjamin Sanford, Sr., b. in 1732. 

ii Stephen, 3rd, b. Dec. 17, 1749, m. Jan. 21, 1773, Deborah, 
dau. of William and Jean West. 

iii Sarah, b. July 27, 1755, m. to William Eagles, and lived to 
be 95. William and Sarah (Strong) Eagles had 13 
children : Prudence ; Henry ; Daniel, m. Alice Melton 
(and had children, Annie and Daniel) ; John, m, Ann 
Coldwell and had 7 children (Sarah, Elias, John, 
Prudence, Isaiah, Ruby, Jacob) ; William, m. his 
brother Daniel's widow, Alice (Melton) and had 6 
children (IngersoU, Grandison, Wilkinson, Sarah 
Alice, Nancy, Elijah) ; Stephen, m. Eunice Coldwell 
and had 7 children (Lucilla, Henry, Thomas Andrew, 
Eunice, Mary, Stephen, Nelson) ; Jeremiah, m, Olivia 
Coldwell, and had 12 children (Arminilla, Welling- 
ton, Jeremiah, Augustus, Olivia, Thompson, James, 
Margaret, Daniel, Burton, Joseph, Henry) ; Sarah, m. 
to Patrick Nowlin; Mary, m. to John Brown; Eliza- 
beth, m. to William McRae; Augustus, m. Matilda 
Denison; Joseph; Nelson. 

iv Elizabeth, b. June 23, 1756, m. June 27, 1779, to George 
Morrison, of Annapolis county. 

V Abigail. 

vi Ruby, m. Feb. 16, 1780, to Daniel Sanford. 

vii Abel, b. May 24, 1762, in Cornwallis, m. Sarah Eaton. 

viii Mary, b. March 15, 1764. 

ix Freedom, b. July 21, 1766, m. to Benjamin Sanford, Jr. 

X Samuel Barstow, b. July 24, 1768. 



838 KING'S COUNTY 

xi Lois, b. Aug. 12, 1770. 
Stephen^ 3rd, Strong, (Stephen, Jr.i) b. Dec. 17, 1749, m. Jan. 21, 
1773, Deborah, dau. of William and Jean West. Children: 

i Peter, b. Aug. 14, 1774. 

ii Hannah, b. Aug. 12, 1776, and probably others. 

AbeP Strong (Stephen, Jr.) b. in 1761, m. Sept. 23, 1784, Sarah, 

dau. of David and Deborah (White Eaton, b. Feb. 13, 1762. Children: 

i Elizabeth, b. Nov. 22, 1786, m. to Huntington. 

ii Mary, b. May 8, 1788, m. Dec. 22, 1814, to Daniel Loomer. 
iii Deborah, b. March 11, 1791, m. Jan. 10, 1809, to Samuel 

Loomer. 
iv David, b. 1794, m. Sept. 7, 1820, Charlotte, dau. of Theo- 

philus and Eleanor Sweet. 

V Abel, Jr., b. 1796, m. Ann , and had a son, Wm. Law- 

rence, b. Jan. 7, 1820. 
vi Stephen, m. Dec. 24, 1817, Ann Stewart, 
vii Cynthia, (or Huldah), m. Nov. 21, 1816, to Stephen 

Loomer. 

viii Sarah, m. to Killam. 

ix Alice, m. to Weaver. 

Peters Strong, (Stephen^ Stephen^), b. Aug. 14, 1774, m. Dec. 20, 

1795, Rachel, dau. of John and Susannah (Hatch) DeWolf, who d. 

June 17, 1874, in her 96th year. He d. June 6, 1858. Children : 

i Susannah, b. Jan. 29, 1797, m. June 20, 1814, to David 

Eaton, Jr. (Elisha) b. Jan. 25, 1797. 

ii Mary Ann, b. Dec. 29, 1799, m. Jan. 22, 1817, to Judah 
Bishop. 

iii Hannah, b. Sept. 12, 1802, m. Jan. 31, 1822, to James 
Eaton, Jr. (Elisha). These were the parents of 
Brenton Halliburton Eaton, K. C, D. C. L. 

iv Lydia, b. Sept. 16, 1805, m. June, 1823, to Pingree Porter. 

V James DeWolf b. Nov. 30, 1807, m. (1) Feb. 22, 1831, 

Eunice Calkin, (2) Jan. 21, 1847, Eliza Akins. 

vi Edward, b. Oct. 24, 1810, m. Jan. 22, 1834, Rachel Bishop, 

vii Charles William, b. June 26, 1813, m. (1) June 22, 1836, 
Mary E. Calkin, (2) Oct. 2, 1845, Lydia Louisa Lock- 
hart. 

viii Stephen, b. Dec. 9, 1815, d. unm. 

ix David Eaton, b. Nov. 23, 1818, m. Oct. 4, 1842, Deborah E. 
Foster. 

X Rachel, b. Jan. 21, 1824, m. Feb. 1, 1847, to William John 
Higgins, and d. Nov. 2, 1906. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 839 

THE STRUTHERS FAMILY 

The Rev, George Stnithers, whose name is importantly connected 
with the church history of King's County, m. (1) in Cornwallis, Jan. 
28, 1830, Rev. John Morton, of Halifax, officiating, Mary, dau. of 
the Rev. William Forsyth. He m. (2), Jan. 4, 1839, Rev. David A. 
Frazure of Lunenburg, officiating, Eliza Ann, dau, of David David- 
son, who long survived him. 

Children by 1st marriage : 

i Mary Stewart, b. Aug. 14, 1831. 
By 2nd marriage: 

ii John, M. D., b. Feb. 17, 1840. 

iii Agnes Eliza, m. to Frederick Chipman, of Kentville. 

iv Marian. 



THE SUTHERLAND FAMILY 

The Sutherland family, of Kentville, came late to the county, it is 
a Scottish family, originally from Sutherlandshire, Scotland, and has 
been represented in the county chiefly by two members, Kenneth 
Sutherland, for some years Manager of the Dominion Atlantic Rail- 
way, and after his retirement, until his death, a resident of Kent- 
ville ; and his first cousin, Kenneth Ronaldson Sutherland, who also 
spent the last years of his life in Kentville and died there. 

Kenneth Sutherland, Manager of the D. A. R. Railway, was a son 

of Spencer and Margaret (Johnston) Sutherland, and a grandson 
of Donald and Christina (Gordon) Sutherland. He m. in Phila- 
delphia a Miss Lex, but had no children. Kenneth Ronald- 
son Sutherland was a son of John and Christina (Ronaldson) 
Sutherland, and was born in Edinburgh, Aug, 15, 1831, and died in 
Kentville, July 27, 1885. He also was a grandson of Donald and 
Christina (Gordon) Sutherland, his great-grandparents being Ken- 
neth and Christina (Ross) Sutherland. A second cousin once re- 
moved of the two Kenneth Sutherlands, of Kentville, was Robert 
Leslie, M, D., b. at Dornoch, Scotland, son of Hugh Leslie Proctor- 
Fiscal, of Dornoch, and his wife, Christina (Sutherland), who was 
at first a Surgeon of the Royal Navy, then of the Royal Irish Rifles, 



840 KING'S COUNTY 

with which regiment he came to Annapolis Koyal (early in the 19th 
century.) Leaving the army he settled at Annapolis, and there, 
marrying (1) Ann Botsford Millidge, (2) Ann E. Sneden, reared an 
important family. See the History of Annapolis, p. 188. Many 
members of this Sutherland family have been officers of the British 
army. 

Kenneth RonaJdson Sutherland m. in Nova Scotia, May 20, 1861, 
Nancy Jean, dau. of John and Jean (Ellis) Tays, of Stewiacke, a 
North of Ireland Church of England famliy. The only sister of Mrs. 
Sutherland was m. to a son of Commander Thomas Blake, R. N., re- 
tired, one of whose daughters was the wife of the Rev. Henry Leigh 
Yewens, first Rector of St. James Church, Kentville. The only child 
of Kenneth Ronaldson and Nancy Jean (Tays) Sutherland is Anna 
Laurie (Sutherland), wife of Rufus William Eaton, 3rd son of 
William and Anna Augusta Willoughby (Hamilton) Eaton, Rufus 
William and Anna Laurie (Sutherland) Eaton have children: Ken- 
neth Sutherland ; William Ronald and Jean Hamilton. 



THE SWEET FAMILY 

The Sweet family of Cornwallis is a branch of the family of that 
name, founded in Rhode Island by James Sweet, M. D., a native of 
Wales, who, between 1630 and '35 settled in North Kingston, where 
he was made freeman. So far as we know the Genealogy of the 
Sweet family has not been compiled, and we are not able to give 
the parentage of John Sweet, who had a grant in Cornwallis in 1764. 
He was, however, probably born in North Kingston. 

In Cornwallis, Theophilus and Eleanor Sweet had chil- 
dren : Sarah, b. April 9, 1777 ; Elizabeth, b. Aug. 2, 1779 ; Mary, b. 
March 16, 1782 ; Nancy, b. Nov. 26, 1784 ; Hannah, b. April 24, 1787. 

Benoni and Hannah Sweet had a son, Enoch, b. April 23, 
1796. Benoni Sweet m. (2) Nov. 20, 1817, Sarah Stewart. From 
Rhode Island records and other sources in the United States and in 
Nova Scotia, no doubt a complete record of the Sweet family could 



FAMILY SKETCHES 841 

be made, but we have at present fewer facts concerning this family 
than of almost any other important family in the county. 



THE TERRY FAMILY 

Captain John^ Terry, a grantee in Cornwallis in 1761, and in 
Aylesford in 1771, was a son of Ephraim and Hannah (Eggleston) 
Terry, of Lebanon, Conn. Hem. (1) a widow, Eachel Cheesborough, 
(2) in Cornwallis, April 18, 1766 (by Amos Bill, J. P.), Esther, dau. 
of John and Lydia Clark. Children : 

i Eachel, b. about 1740, m. Jan. 31, 1760, to Dan Throope, 
Jr. The Throopes perhaps removed to New York 
state. 

ii Ephraim, b. about 1742, m. in Lebanon, Dec. 24, 1772, Ann 
Johnson, and d. in Cornwallis, April 27, 1833. He 
owned a small farm at "Terry's Creek," now Port 
Williams. Children: John, b. July 24, 1773, d. at 
Port Williams, Nov. 18, 1857, unm. ; William, b. Feb. 
20, 1776, m. in 1806, Anna English, and d. in Corn- 
wallis, Jan. 19, 1846; Wealthy, b. Oct. 30, 1779, m. 
Dec. 25, 1804, to Jacob, son of John and Mercy 
(Barnaby) Newcomb, b. Jan, 6, 1776, d. Aug. 4. 
1854; Anne, b. Dec. 9, 1781, d. Jan. 30, 1851, unm. 
All the children of Ephraim were b. in Lebanon, 
Conn. 

iii William, b. June 28, 1745, m. in Poughkeepsie, N. Y., Oct. 
6, 1774, Ruth Smith, b. March 8, 1755. He probably 
lived in Poughkeepsie. 

iv Pern, b. in 1749, in Lebanon, m. June 23, 1774, in Cornwal- 
lis, Sarah, dau. of Elkanah and Rebecca Morton, and 
d. March 14, 1827. Children: John Morton, b. May 

9, 1775, m. Beckwith ; Rebecca, b. May 19, 1777, 

m. Gilbert ; Esther, b. March 19, 1779, m. June 

26, 1799, to Joshua, son of Joseph and Hannah Chase ; 
Sarah, b. Feb. 27, 1783, d. unm.; Paula, b. Feb. 1, 
1787 ; Ephraim, b. Feb. 3, 1800. This record is taken 
from the Cornwallis Town Book. Dr. Brechin's 
manuscript adds : Mary, m. Feb. 29, 1816, to Richard 
Lee; Rachel, m. May 7, 1812, to George Gilmore, who 
d. March 13, 1831, she dying Jan. 11, I860; Pern 
Rawson, m. July 5, 1828, Sarah Ann, dau. of Daniel 
and Abigail (Newcomb) Cogswell, b. Dec. 5, 1806; 
Sacharissa, m. to William, son of John and Thankful 



842 KING'S COUNTY 

(Burgess) Neweomb, b. June 14, 1798; George Wil- 
liam, b. Aug. 14, 1796, m. Hannah Best. 

George William^ Terry (Pern^, Capt. Johni), Aug. 14, 1796, 
m. Feb. 18, 1818, Hannah Best, b. Feb. 19, 1798. He d. March 21, 
1856 ; she d. June 15, 1877. They were for many years well known 
residents of Kentville. Children: 

i George, m. in the State of Maine, and lived in New Eng- 
land. 

ii Henry, m. Jan. 1, 1852, Mary Sophia, dau. of Jacomiah 
and Lydia (DeWolf) Seaman, b. Sept. 23, 1822. He 
d. Sept. 7, 1893. Children: Helen, d. young; George 

Clinton, living in California; Nancy A., m. to 

Etter, of Shubenacadie, N, S. ; Jonathan McCuUy, liv- 
ing in Denver, Colorado ; Alice, m. Charles E. Creigh- 
ton, of Dartmouth, N. S. Mrs. Henry Terry is living 
in Shubenacadie, with her daughter, Mrs. Etter. 

iii Isabella. 

iv Frederick, d. unm. 

V Julia, d. unm. 

vi Maria, d. unm. 



THE THORNE FAMILY 

The Thorne family is chiefly an Annapolis county family, but 
for many years it has been represented in King's as well. James 
Hall Thorne. B. A., Barrister, who after his retirement from public 
life lived in Kentville, was the eldest son of Stephen Sneden 
Thorne, M. P. P., of Annap.olis county, and his wife Mehitable 
Patten (Hall), and was b. Sept. 28, 1818. He m., Oct. 13, 1847, 
Mary, daughter of Dr. Silas and Rhoda (Burgess) Piper, sister of 
Mrs. Alwyn Creighton of Halifax, and Mrs. Henry Prat of Kent- 
ville, and d. in Kentville, May 8, 1887. His widow d. in Ottawa a 
few years later. James Hall Thorne was graduated B. A., at King's 
College, Windsor, in 1840, was admitted to the N. S. Bar in 1844, 
and became a Master of the Supreme Court, and Eegistrar of the 
Divorce Court, of the province. At the time of the Confederation 
of the provinces he held the position of Deputy Provincial Secre- 
tary. For many years he was Chief at the Money Order Office 



FAMILY SKETCHES 843 

in Halifax. He and his wife, as also his father and mother, are 
buried in Camp Hill Cemetery, Halifax. His sister Havilah Jane 
Thome, was m. July 12, 1842, to Timothy Dwight Ruggles, Barris- 
ter, of Bridgetown, N. S., and had a dau. Anna, m. to Arthur John- 
stone, son of Judge James William, Jr., and Katherine Preseott 
(Fairbanks) Johnstone, of Dartmouth, N. S. His sister, Anna Sne- 
den Thome, was m. June 6, 1850, to Lewis Johnstone, Jr., M.D., son of 
Lewis, M. D., and his wife Marianne (Pryor) Johnstone, of the Island 
of Jamaica, of Halifax, and of Wolfville, N. S., and had a dau. 
Florence, m. to Edwin Gilpin, C. E., of Halifax. The children of 
James Hall and Mary (Piper) Thome were as follows: 

i Lydia Ann, b. in 1847, m. to John B. Gray, of Halifax, and 
d. Aug. 8, 1877. 

ii James Hall, b. Feb. 6, 1850 m. Jessie, dau. of Charles 
Robson, of Halifax, and d. Oct. 23, 1887. 

iii Stephen Sneden, b. Dec. 31, 1851, m. April 28, 1891, Ada 
Sayre Harrison, of Brooklyn, N. Y. He was long in 
the Civil Service at Ottawa. 

iv Edward Lefferts, Manager of the Union Bank, at Halifax, 
m. Jessie, dau. of James McNab. 

V Livingston Morse, d. young. 

vi Sancton, d. young. 

vii Sarah Prances Almon. 

viii Augusta Billing, m. June 16, 1887, to Leslie Seymour 
Eaton, youngest son of William and Anna Augusta 
Willoughby (Hamilton) Eaton, and has two daugh- 
ters; Emily Augusta Thorne Eaton and Helen Went- 
worth Hamilton Eaton. 



THE THORPE FAMILY 

The Thorpe family of Cornwallis is no doubt a branch of the 
family founded in New Haven, Conn., by William Thorpe, one of 
the earliest settlers there. An article in the N. E. Hist. & Gen. 
Register for Oct. 1905, gives as much light on the family, but does 
not give us the parents of Oliver Thorpe, the Cornwallis grantee. 

Oliveri Thorpe, son of Peter and Abigail Thorpe, m. Jan. 23, 
1767, Mrs. Hannah (Edgerton) Stark, dau. of Joseph and Eunice 
Edgerton. Children : 



844 KING'S COUNTY 

i Eliphalet, m. March 10, 1785, Hannah, dau. of Philip and 
Alice McDaniel. Children: Mary, b. Dec. 26, 1785; 
Elizabeth, b. Nov. 25, 1787 ; Aaron, b. Oct. 19, 1789. 

ii Timothy, m. Nov. 7, 1796, Mrs. Eunice (Bennett) Rogers, 
dau. of Zedediah and Mary Bennett. Children: Re- 
becca, b. Aug. 15, 1797 ; Mary, b. May 13, 1799 ; Lucy, 
b. Feb. 14, 1801 ; Temperance, b. Nov. 15, 1803 ; Mat- 
tie (?), b. April 7, 1806; Elisha Edgerton, b. Feb. 7, 
1808; Phebe, b. March 4, 1812. 

iii Joseph Edgerton. 

iv Temperance, b. June 5, 1771. 

V Peter, b. May 17, 1775, m. (1), Dec. 24, 1806, Ruby, dau. 
of Stephen and Ruby Porter, (2) Huldah . Chil- 
dren by 2nd wife: Ruby Kinsman, b. July 13, 1811; 
Levi Woodworth, b, Jime 26, 1814; Zephaniah, b. 
Oct. 13, 1816; Henry AUen, b. June 1, 1819; John 
Nelson, b. July 22, 1821; Huldah Arminia, b. Nov. 
16, 1825, d. Sept. 7, 1826 ; Peter Douglas, b. June 22, 
1827; Ingram Bill, b. April 23, 1830. 

vi Aaron, twin with Peter. 

vii Oliver, Jr., m. Sept. 26, 1816, Lydia . 



THE TOBIN FAMILY 

The Hon. Michael, Sr., and the Hon. James Tobin, both born in 
Ireland, founded families of great prominence in Halifax, N. S., 
where both brothers were successful merchants. The Hon. Michael 
Tobin married twice, his second wife being Rebecca, daughter of 
Capt. Dean, R. N., who died and is buried in England. By his 1st 
marriage, Hon. Michael Tobin had children: Anne, m. to Sir 
William Young, Kt., Thomas m. to Frances Donovan, and had sons, 
Stephen, once Mayor of Halifax, and Henry; Stephen; George; 
Margaret Cecilia; Mary; John Michael, m. Lily, dau. of Col. Max- 
well, and had children, John, Michael, Annie, wife of Col. James 

Creagh, and Margaret, wife of Langton, of London, England ; 

James, and probably others. By his 2nd marriage he had children : 
Charles Jane, b. Aug. 3, 1822; Jane; Ellen; Michael. 

Charles Jane Tobin, (Hon. Michael), b. in Halifax, Aug. 3, 1822, 
m. in Cornwallis, April 2, 1846, Catherine, only daughter of William 



FAMILY SKETCHES 845 

Henry and Eleanor (McHeffey) Allison, of Cornwallis, b. July 14, 
1826, d. June 19, 1880. Eleanor (McHeffey) Allison was a daughter 
of Robert and Eleanor McHeffey, of Windsor. 

For many years the Tobin home, ''Woodbume," near Kentville, 
was one of the most attractive and hospitable homes in the county. 
Charles Jane Tobin finally removed to Bridgewater, Lunenburg 
Co., where he died, Sept. 6. 1908. Children : 

i Eleanor Rebecca, m. (1), to Benjamin, son of Benjamin 

and Seraph (Wiswall) Smith, of St. John, N. B., (2), 
in London, England, to D. F. Arthur Leahy, of Cork, 
Ireland. Children by 1st marriage: Wm. Chearnley 
Smith, M. D., a physician in London, m. Isabella 
Scott, in Edinburgh; Allison Smith, m. to Major 
Henry Bailey, 5th Royal Lancers, retired; Violet 
Smith, a cloistered nun ; Frederick Smith. Child by 
2nd marriage : Catharine Leahy. 

ii William Young. 

iii Laura Elizabeth, m. to Hon. William H. Owen, M. L. C, 
of Bridgewater, N. S., and has daughters. 

iv Mary Margaret, m. Sept. 24, 1893, to Robert Hunter 
Fraser. 

Another descendant in King's County of the Halifax Tobin 

family, was William J, Sawyer, a son of Sheriff J. J. Sawyer of 

Halifax, and his wife Eliza, dau. of Hon. James Tobin, brother of 

Hon. Michael, Sr. William J. Sawyer m. in Cornwallis, Olivia, 

dau. of Timothy, Jr., and Jane (Chipman) Barnaby, b. about 1819. 



THE TUPPER FAMILY 

Captain Eliakim Tupper, Jr., the founder of the King's County 
Tupper family, was b. at Sandwich, Mass., June 20, 1711, m. March 
28, 1734, Mary Bassett, and d. Feb. 28, 1761. The Tupper family 
is by aU means one of the most remarkable families the county has 
ever had, persons bearing the Tupper name or having Tupper blood 
having risen to the highest positions in Canada and elsewhere. The 
New England Tupper family began with Thomas Tupper, who was 
bom in Sandwich, Eng., in 1578, and settled in N. E., first in Lynn, 
then in Sandwich, on Cape Cod. In the latter place he was a 



846 KING'S COUNTY 

magistrate and selectman, and for 19 years was a deputy to the 
General Court. He was also a missionary to the Indians, and a 
member of the war council. His son Thomas, Jr., who m. Martha, 
dau. of Thomas Mayhew, of Martha's Vineyard, was also an influ- 
ential man in the colony. He, too, was a deputy to the General 
Court. A son of Thomas, Jr., was Eliakim, and Eliakim's son 
Eliakim, Jr., was the Oornwallis grantee. Elias Tupper, a brother 
of Eliakim, Jr., of Cornwallis, b. at Sandwich, Mass., Oct. 12, 1715, 
m. Sept. 4, 1740, Jerusha Sprague, b. in 1723, and, settled in Anna- 
polis Co. See History of Annapolis. Their son Eliakim, 3rd b. 
prob. in 1741, m. in Cornwallis in 1762, Elizabeth, dau. of Capt. 
Eddy Newcomb, b. Jime 12, 1743, and about 1773, settled in Truro, 
N. S. From Truro he removed, about 1792, to Stewiacke. His 
children intermarried with the Cock, Archibald, Fisher, Fulton, 
Dickie, and other families, of Colchester Co. C3iildren of Capt. 
Eliakim Tupper, Jr. : 

i William, b. July 6, 1735, m. Oct. 7, 1755, Margaret, dau. of 
Robert and Mary Gates. 

ii Abia. 

iii Ruth, b. in 1741, at Sandwich, m. Nov. 30, 1763, in Corn- 
wallis, to Jabez West. See the West Family. 

iv Mary, b. in 1743. 

V Charles, b. Aug. 19, 1748, m. Elizabeth West. 

Charles2 Tupper (Eliakim^, Jr.), b. at Plymouth, Mass., Aug. 19, 
1748, m. in Cornwallis, Oct. 24, 1771, Elizabeth, dau. of William and 
Jean West, and d. April 29, 1822. Dr. Brechin says that he was 
familiarly known as "the Christian gentleman." At a reunion 
of the family in 1837, his widow being still alive, there were present 
of his descendents, 14 children, 83 grandchildren, and 83 great- 
grandchildren. Children : 

i Thomas, b. March 3, 1774, m. Oct. 1, 1800, Jerusha Scho- 

field. 
ii Charles, b. Oct. 17, 1776, d. young, 
iii Eliakim, 3rd, b. June 18, 1776, m. April 21, 1803, Rebecca, 

dau. of Levi and Lois Loomer. 
iv Deborah, b. May 22, 1778, m. April 5, 1802, to Silas, Jr., 

dau. of Silas and Amy (Tupper) Rand. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 847 

V Abigail, b. April 25, 1780, m. May 5, 1803, to John, son of 

John and Abigail Pearson, 
vi Francis, b. June 22, 1782, m. Susanna, dau. of Benjamin 

Foster, and d. Dee. 15, 1882. 
vii Samuel, b. April 19, 1784, d. young, 
viii William Orestes, b. Feb. 16, 1786, m. Oct. 22, 1809, Lois 

Schofield, and . Dec. 5, 1875. 
ix Samuel, b. March 25, 1788, m. Mary, dau. of Benjamin 

Foster, b. Dec. 29, 1788. He d. April 23, 1817. 
X Wealthy, b. April 8, 1790, d. June 12, 1872. 
xi Augustus, b. Oct. 10, 1792, m. Mrs. Mary (Foster) Tupper. 
xii Rev. Charles, D. D., b. Aug. 6, 1794, m. (1) Mrs. Miriam 

(Lockhart) Low, (2) Mary Miller, (3) Mrs. Samuel 

Knowles, nee Dimock. 
xiii Nathan, b. Oct. 17, 1796, m. April 17, 1817, Rachel Tupper, 

dau. of Silas and Amy Ran(i, who d. Sept. 27, 1833, 

in her 33rd year. They lived in Aylesford. 
xiv Jeremiah, b. in 1800, m. Sept. 20, 1826, Mary Ann, dau. 

of Elijah and Elizabeth (Rand) Eaton b. perhaps in 

1807, and had 4 daughters who grew up. Two of these 

were : Eliza Ann, b. July 10, 1827 ; Wealthy Lavinia, 

b. June 5, 1830. He d. Sept. 17, 1846, she d. Feb. 

5, 1856, aged 49. 

Augustus^ Tupper (Charles^ Eliakim^, Jr.), b. Oct. 10, 1792, m. 
March 25, 1818, Mrs. Mary (Foster) Tupper, dau. of Benjamin and 
Elizabeth (Richardson) Foster, and widow of Augustus Tupper 's 
elder brother, Samuel. She was b. Dec. 29, 1788, and d. Oct. 20, 
1849. He d. April 11, 1850. Children: 

i Helen, b. April 20, 1819. 

ii Diadama, b. April 12, 1822. 

iii Isaac Newton, b. July 1, 1824. 

iv Elizabeth M., m. to John Hop;son Clarke, Esq., of Canning, 
and is the mother of Lady Borden, wife of Hon. Sir 
Frederick Borden, K. C. M. G., D. C. L., &e., &e. 

V Rebecca Manning, b. March 31, 1815, m. in 1839, to 

Richard North. See the North Family. 

Rev. Charles^ Tupper, D. D. (Charles^, Eliakim^, Jr.), b. Aug. 6, 
1794, m. (1) Dec. 3, 1818, Mrs. Miriam (Lockhart) Low, of Parrs- 
borough, widow of John Low; (2) June 2, 1852, Mary Miller, of 
Aylesford, probably a daughter of William and Julia Miller, and b. 



848 KING'S COUNTY 

Oct. 8, 1804; (3) May 5, 1868, Mrs. Samuel Knowles, of Avondale, 
King's County, dau. of Eev. George Dimoek. He d. Jan. 19, 1881, 
and is buried at Kingston, Aylesford. See Personal Sketches. 
Children : 

i A daughter, b. Nov. 14, 1819, d. young. 

ii Rt. Hon. Sir Charles, Bart., b. July 2, 1821, the distinguished 

Canadian statesman, of whom see further on. 
iii Nathan, M. D., b. July 18, 1823, a prominent physician of 
Amherst, N. S., who had a family in Amherst, of 
high social standing, 
iv James, b. in 1825, d. young. 

One of the most distinguished persons having a King's County 
ancestry, is the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles Tupper, Bart., G. C. M. G., C. B., 
LL. D., Cambridge, (Eng.), Edinburgh, and Queen's (Canada) Uni- 
versities, D. C. L. of Acadia (1882). Sir Charles Tupper m., Oct. 
8, 1846, Frances Amelia, dau. of Silas Hibbert and Elizabeth 
(Stewart) Morse, of Amherst, N. S., and has had children: James 
Stewart Tupper, K. C, of Ravenscourt, Winnipeg, Canada, b. Oct. 
26, 1851 ; Hon. Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper, K. C. M. G., of Parkside, 
Vancouver, B. C, b. Aug. 3, 1855 ; William Johnston Tupper, Barris- 
ter, of Elmhurst, Winnipeg, b. June 29, 1862; Emma, m. July 22, 
1869, to Major General Donald Roderick Cameron, C. M. G. ; Eliza- 
beth Stewart, d. in infancy, Nov. 1, 1850; Sophie Almon, d. Aug. 
17, 1863. Sir Charles Tupper is a licentitate of the Royal College of 
Surgeons, Edinburgh, in 1843. He was Prime Minister of Nova 
Scotia from 1864 to 1867, the date of the union of the provinces 
was sworn a member of the Privy Council of the Dominion in 1870 
held the office of President of the Privy Council from 1870 to 1872 
was minister of Inland Revenue, 1872-3, of Customs, 1873, of Public 
Works, 1878-9 and of Railways and Canals, 1879-84; High Com- 
missioner in Great Britain for the Dominion of Canada, 1883-7 ; 
Minister of Finance, 1887-8 ; High Commissioner in Great Britain, 
1888-96; one of Queen Victoria's plenipotentiaries in the Fishery 
Commission at Washington, 1887-8, and in the negotiation of a 
treaty relating to Franco-Canadian Trade, 1893; a member of the 
Executive Council of the Imperial Institute and of the British 



FAMILY SKETCHES 849 

Empire League; Sec'y of State for Canada, 1896, and Prime 
Minister the same year; and leader of the opposition in the 
Canadian House of Commons, 1896-1900. He was nominated a C. B. 
June 29, 1867, K. C. M. G., May 24, 1879, and G. C. M. G., Feb. 
1, 1886. He was created a baronet by patent, Sept. 13, 1888, and 
sworn a member of King Edward's Privy Council, October 19, 1909. 
Of Sir Charles Tupper's sons, James Stewart Tupper m. (1) Sept. 
8, 1875, Mary Wilson, dau. of Andrew Robertson of Montreal, (2) 
June 9, 1880, Ada Campbell, dau. of Sir Thomas Gait; Sir Charles 
Hibbert Tupper, K. C. M. G., m. Sept. 9, 1879, Janet, dau. of Hon. 
Chief Justice James Macdonald, of Halifax; William Johnston, 
m. July 6, 1887, Margaret, dau. of Hon. Chief Justice James Mac- 
donald. 

Arms of Sir Charles Tupper, Bart. : Per f esse az. and or on a 
fesse erm. between two boars pass. in. chief or, and a sprig of may- 
flower slipped and leaved in base ppr. three escallops gu. Crest: 
Upon a mount vert a greyhound statant sa. charged on the body 
with two escallops or, holding in the mouth a sprig of mayflower 
as in the arms. Motto: L'espoir est ma force. Supporters: On 
either side a greyhound sa. collared and pendent therefrom an 
escutcheon or, charged with a sprig of mayflower slipped and 
leaved ppr. 



THE TURNER FAMILY 

Johni Turner b. July 29, 1728, in New London, Conn., was a 

grantee in Horton. He was the eldest son of Thomas Turner, b. 

about 1700 in Scituate, Mass., settled in New London about 1720, 

and m. there (1) Nov. 23, 1727, Patience, dau. of John and Sarah 

(Edgecombe) BoUes or Bowles, who bore him 9 children. Patience 

d. about 1760 and he m. (2) Dec. 8, 1770, Mary, widow of John 

Waterhouse. His son John, the Horton grantee, m. in Conn., Nov. 

1, 1750, Bathsheba Whipple. Children : 

i John, b. Nov. 27, 1751, m. Aug. 17, 1773, Anne Witter. 
Children : Amy, b. Sept. 25, 1774 ; John Q., b. March 
17, d. Sept. 19, 1776; Bathsheba, b. Oct. 23, 1777; 



850 KING'S COUNTY 

John, b. April 10, d. June 7, 1780; Sarah, b. July 
18, 17— d. Aug. 15, 1783; Charlotte, b. Oct. 13, 
1783. 
ii Elizabeth b. June 15, 1753. 
iii James, b. 1757. 
iv Thomas, b. 1759. 
V Samuel, b. Oct. 30, 1761. 
vi Matthew, b. April 11, 1764. 
vii Bathsheba, b. Nov. 11, 1769. 

viii Deloma, m. to Gideon Comstoek, Jr., eldest brother of 
Ezekiel Comstoek, the Horton grantee. 
A William Turner m. in Horton, May, 1812, Susan Minor, and had 
children: James; Charles William; Eliza, and perhaps others. 

A Thomas Turner m. in Horton, Aug. 13, 1812, Jerusha Griffin, 
and had children: Harris, b. Aug. 6, 1813; Daniel, b. Dec. 15, 1815; 
Sarah, b. Dec. 25, 1817 ; Israel Prentice, b. May 26, 1822. 

A Sarah Turner was m. in Horton to Samuel Randall, and had 
children: Eliza Ann, b. Jan. 1, 1813; William Green, b. Jan. 22, 
1816. We are unable to carry this Turner sketch farther, but it is 
to be hoped some member of the family will continue it. 



THE TWINING FAMILY 
The Rev. William Twining, Rector of St. John's Church, Corn- 
wallis, from 1789 to 1806, was of a family which originated in 
Gloucester, England, but established itself in Wales. He was b. 
in Pembrokeshire, Wales, in 1750, and from there in 1770 went as 
S. P. G. missionary to Exuma, in the Bahama Islands. Prom Exuma 
he came to Nova Scotia, and for a time he seems to have studied 
as a pre-charter student at King's College, Windsor. Oct. 5, 1789, 
he m. in Halifax, Sarah, daughter of Rev. Joshua Wingate Weeks, 
a Loyalist clergyman, and his wife Sarah (Treadwell), and that 
year was placed in charge of the mission of Cornwallis. When 
he removed from Cornwallis, he went directly to Sydney, Cape 
Breton, but some time after, he came to Newport and Rawdon, 
Hants county. In 1816, when Bishop Charles Inglis was buried 
in Halifax it was he who (as Rector of Rawdon) read the burial 



FAMILY SKETCHES 851 

service. It is said in Burke's Colonial Gentry that he finally went 
back to Wales and died, Vicar of Walton East and Clarbeston. The 
date of his death given in Burke, however, is undoubtedly wrong. 
Children : 

i William, b. in 1790, is called in Burke "of the Bengal 

Medical Establishment," He m. in 1817, Martha 
Montgomery, and d. in 1835, leaving a dau. Ellen, 
m. in 1848 to Frederick Cleeve, C. B., R. N., J. P., 
of Rokeby, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, Eng. 

ii Rev. John Thomas, D. D., b. May 14, bap. June 2, 1793, 
in Cornwallis, m. in 1818, Susan Mary Winniett. 
and d. in 1860. Children: Edward; Henry Charles, 
b. in 1820, m. in 1845, Mary, dau. of Hon. Charles 
Fairbanks; John Temple, H. M. 64th Regt., d. 
unm, ; George, d. unm. ; William, a surgeon in 
the army. The Rev. Dr. John Thomas Twining 
entered King's College, Windsor, in 1809, and grad- 
uated B. A., in 1813 (M. A. in 1816), receiving the 
degree of D. D. in 1823. In the history of the 
Church in Halifax, and indeed in relation to re- 
ligion and education in King's, he plays, though in 
King 's indirectly, an important part. He was curate of 
St. Paul's, Halifax, from 1816 to '17, when Dr. John 
Inglis became Rector of the parish, until 1825, when 
the Rev. Robert Willis was elected in Dr. Inglis' place. 
That he was not made rector instead of Mr. Willis 
was the chief cause of the removal from St. 
Paul's of the influential men who, as we have else- 
where shown, henceforth gave their advocacy to the 
Baptist denomination. Like his father 's, Dr Twining 's 
churchmanship was simple and earnest, and under 
his instruction many of the parishoners of St. Paul's 
had their spiritual life deeply stirred. He was also 
for years, both while he was curate of St. Paul's 
and afterward, Chaplain to the Forces, and many a 
young officer of the garrison was moved by his earn- 
est ministration to a vital interest in religious 
things. After 1846, when the Garrison Chapel was 
built, until his death. Dr. Twining officiated in that 
church. Both Dr. and Mrs. Twining are buried in 
the Military Burying Ground at Fort Massey, 
Halifax. Dr. Twining died, his tombstone records, 
in the 45th year of his ministry. 

iii Elizabeth, b. Oct. 11, bap. Oct. 19, 1794. 



852 KING'S COUNTY 

iv Mary, b. Jan. 7, bap. Jan. 29, 1797. 

V Anne, b. Aug. 12, bap. Aug. 26, 1798. 

vi Charles, b. Sept. 26, bap. Oct. 5, 1801, graduated B. A. 
at King's in 1820, became a lawyer and Q. C. at 
Halifax, and m. there Feb., 1825, Catherine, dau. of 
John Tremaine, and d. at Lee, Kent, England, in 
1868, having had children : John Tremaine ; William ; 
Edmund Crawley; Charles; James Johnstone. 

vii Sarah Weeks, b. March 18, bap. March 26, 1803. 

viii James K., buried at 8 days old, Dee. 31, 1805. Except 
the first three these children were all born and bap- 
tized in Cornwallis. 



THE VAN BUSKIRK FAMILY 
Lawrence Van Bnskirk, b. in Hackensack, Bergen county, N. J., 
in 1729, a captain in the King's Orange Rangers, came to St. John, 
N. B., as a Loyalist, in 1783. Soon after he came to Nova Scotia; 
for a while he lived "near Kentville. " From Kentville he re- 
moved to Aylesford, where he bought land of Daniel Bo wen and 
settled. He m, his cousin, Jannetje Van Buskirk, who d. in 1791. 
He d. at Aylesford in 1803. Children: 

i Capt. Abram, b. about 1750, was in the King's Orange 
Rangers. He m. Ann Corson, and came to Nova 
Scotia as a Loyalist. Before long, however, he re- 
turned and was a merchant at Athens on the Hud- 
son, N. Y. 

ii Lieut. Thomas, b. in 1752, m. Van Buskirk and came 

to N. S. He too returned to the United States. 

iii John, b. in 1754, m. , and had at least 4 children 

Lawrence; Charles; Henry; Jeremiah. 

iv Garrett, b. in 1756, m. Elizabeth Potts and lived in Ayles- 
ford, where he d. in 1843. He had children: Law- 
rence; John; Dorothy; Ann; Samuel; Catherine; 
Jemima; Abram; Henry; Nelson; Charles. He 
brought two slaves with him to Aylesford. 

V Dorothy, m. (1) to Martin Ryerson, (2) to Thomas Welton. 
She d. in 1849. 

vi Theodosia, m. to James Harris. See the Harris Family. 

vii Henry, b. prob. in 1767, m. (1) Feb. 20, 1797, Isabella 
Donking, (2) Nov. 30, 1829, Nancy Potter. He d. 
March 16, 1841, "aged 74." He was long one of the 
most important residents of Aylesford, his place 



FAMILY SKETCHES . 853 

there being called "Frogmore." Children: William 
Henry, b. May 1, 1798; Lawrence E., M. D., b. Nov. 
G, 1799; Elizabeth, b. Jan. 14, 1802; Robert, 
M. D., b. March 13, 1804, m. Ann, dau. of James R. 
DeWolf; George Pitt, M. D., b. April 15, 1806; 
Charlotte, b. June 14, 1808 ; Abram, b. Jan. 4, 1811, m. 
Eliza Harris ; Inglis, M. D., b. April 9, 1813, m. Eliza 
Barss; James Donking, b. May 4, 1816, m. Cather- 
ine Owen. The Van Buskirk family is conspicuously 
mentioned in an early chapter of this book. It is 
carried out somewhat further in the Chute Gene- 
alogies. 



THE VAN CORTLANDT FAMILY 

An account of Col. Philip Van Cortlandt and his family, who in 
1790 received a large grant of land in Aylesford, has already been 
given in the 6th Chapter of this book. How many years the Van 
Cortlandts remained in the county we do not know, but they were 
here in 1794, for in that year Col. Van Cortlandt was on duty in 
Halifax, with other officers of the Second Regiment of King's. 
Philip, Van Cortlandt, son of Stephen and Mary (Ricketts) Van 
Cortlandt, of Cortlandt Manor, Westchester, New York, was 
b. Nov. 10, 1739, and m. Catherine, dau. of Jacob Ogden. He 
d. in England, May 1, 1814 ; his wife d. in England in 1828. Prob- 
ably no exact record of his children is anywhere in print, but Sabine 
says he had in all twenty-three children, of whom ten died young. 
It is probable that a complete record of the baptisms of these chil- 
dren may be found in one of the Westchester churches. His chil- 
dren who grew up were, says Sabine: Ensign Philip, Jr., b. in 
1766, an ensign in the 3rd Battalion of New Jersey Volunteers; 
Stephen, a twin of Philip; Jacob Ogden, a Captain in the British 
Army, killed in Spain in 1811 ; Henry Clinton, a Major in the 31st 
Regt. who in 1835 was living in the East Indies ; Arthur Auchmuty, 
a Captain in the 45th Regt., who d. at Madras; Mary Ricketts, m. 
to John M. Anderson; Elizabeth, m. to William Taylor, of Cowley 
House, England; Catharine, twin of Elizabeth, m. to Dr. William 
Gourlay, of Scotland, whose daughter Jane was m. to General 



854 KING'S COUNTY 

John Austin; Margaret Hughes, m. to O. Elliott Elliott, of Binfield 
Park; Gertrude, m. to Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Buller, Bart., and 
d. at Torquay in 1849 ; Sarah Ogden ; Charlotte. 



THE WALLACE FAMILY 

The WaUaee family of King's County is said to have started in 
Hants, its founder being "a Loyalist from one of the Carolinas to 
whom a grant was given in Hants after the Revolutionary War." 
The name of this founder of the family we do not know, but he had 
sons: Joshua and Michael, who lived at West Gore, Hants county; 
William and Thomas in Rawdon, Hants county; and Robert, who 
came to Horton. 

Robert2 Wallace, b. Nov. 9, 1787, m. Christina J. MacLellan, b. 
June 23, 1788. He d. in Sept., 1876; she d. in Sept., 1862. Chil- 
dren: 



i 


William John, d. young, 


ii 


Andrew. 


iii 


Robert. 


iv 


Eliza. 


V 


Mary Ann. 


vi 


William John. 


vii 


Thomas. 


viii 


Joshua. 


ix 


James Andrew. 



William John^ Wallace (Robert^), m. Dec. 4, 1851, Rachel L. 
Witter, dau. of Samuel and Hannah (Bishop) Witter, of Canaan, 
Horton, and had children: Alfaretta Eugenia, b. Oct. 14, 1852; 
Bertha C. M., b. Dec. 15, 1854; Rev. Gates Charles Symonds, D. D., 
LL. D., b. Nov. 28, 1856; H. Christina, b. Dec. 29, I860; Harriet 
E., b. Feb. 18, 1863 ; Burpee W., b. Oct. 19, 1869. Of this family 
the most eminent is the Rev. Gates Charles Symonds Wallace, D. D., 
LL. D., who graduated B. A., at Acadia University in 1883, M. A. in 
1889, and received his D. D. in 1897. He studied at Newton 
Theological Seminary in Mass., was ordained at Lawrence, Mass., 



FAMILY SKETCHES 855 

in 1885, and for six years was pastor of a Baptist church in that 
city. In 1891 he became pastor of the Bloor Street Baptist Church, 
Toronto, but in 1895 was appointed Chancellor of McMaster Univ. 
In 1905 he became pastor of the 1st Baptist church in Lowell, Mass., 
and in 1908 pastor of the 1st Baptist church of Baltimore, Md. He 
received the degree of LL. D., from Mercer Univ., U. S. A. in 1897, 
Queen's Univ., Canada in 1903, and McMaster Univ. in 1909. In 1894 
he published "The Life of Jesus," and he has published several 
pamphlets of a religious character. He m. (1) in 1885, Leonette, 
2nd dau. of H. H. Crosby, of Hebron, N. S., (2) in 1904, Mrs. Frances 
Moule Wells, widow of Professor J. E. Wells, LL. D., of N. B., 
at one time Principal of Woodstock College, Ontario. 



THE WALTON FAMILY 

Concerning the Walton family of Cornwallis we have very little 
information. William Walton, son of Jacob and Hannah Walton, 

m. in Cornwallis 12, 1807, Sarah, dau. of Stephen and Amy 

Harrington. James Walton, also son of Jacob and Hannah, m. Nov. 
23, 1820 (by Rev. Robert Norris) Charlotte, dau. of Isaac and 
Eunice Beach. 



THE WARD FAMILY 

William and Elizabeth (Elizabeth) Ward were m. in England, and 
embarking at Hull, between Feb. 28 and March 7, 1774, came from 
Yorkshire to Nova Scotia in the ship Two Friends. Their rent had 
been raised by John Matthews, their landlord and they came to Amer- 
ica "to seek a better livelihood." See N. E. Hist. & Gen. Reg., Vol 63, 
p. 28. With them came their eldest child, Moses, aged 18 months. 
They first lived in Windsor, but soon settled at Beech Hill. King's 
County, there being then no road south of Kentville. The clearing 
William Ward made was the furthest clearing south, in the county. 
He d. Nov. 26, 1844; she d. Nov. 19, 1841. Children: 



856 KING'S COUNTY 

i Moses b. in England in 1772, settled in Digby. 

ii David, m. in Horton, Sept, 20, 1810, Mary Fielding, and 
had children : Benjamin Fielding, b. April 17, 1813 ; 
Eliza Jane, b. Nov. 23, 1811, and perhaps others. 

iii William, m. and had children: William B.; Joseph; 
IngersoU ; Ebenezer ; James E. ; George ; John ; 
Leander. 

iv John, m. (1) in Horton, April 14, 1803, Sarah Hale, and 
had children : Mary, b. Jan. 24, 1804 ; William Allen, 
b. Oct. 14, 1805; Elizabeth, b. Dec. 19, 1807; John 
Archibald, b. May 16, 1810; Olivia, b. Sept. 26, 1812; 
Sarah Content, b. Jan. 15, 1815; James, b. Nov. 21, 
1817; Isaac Newton, b. Feb. 1, 1820; Rebeekah 

Susanna, b. Aug. 10, 1822; Henry. He m. (2) , 

and had: Joseph; Nathan P.; Robert Colin. Of 
these sons Nathan P., m. Sophia Ells, and had chil- 
dren: Everett; Norman; Winifred; Nathan. 

V Joseph, m. , and had sons Nathan, and Joseph. He 

settled in Aylesford. 

vi Aaron, b. Jan. 25, 1798, m. Jan. 24, 1821, Sarah Kilcup, 
and had children: Mary Ann, b. Oct. 4, 1821; 
William Henry, b. Nov. 14, 1822; James S. ; Aaron, 
Jr. 



THE WEAVER FAMILY 

The Weaver family of Cornwallis is another of the well known 
Rhode Island families which was transplanted to King 's County. Its 
immediate origin is very likely to be found in Middletown, R. I., 
bu,t we have not been able to trace it. 

Jabez and Lydia Weaver had children recorded in Cornwallis: 
Sally, b. July 16, 1787 ; Elizabeth, b. Sept. 2, 1789 ; Eunice, b. Nov. 
25, 1792; Benjamin, b. June 2, 1795; James, b. March 30, 1798; 
Lydia, b. May 8, 1801. 

Benjamin and Martha Weaver had children recorded: Henry 
Allen, b. May 22, 1802; Elizabeth, b. July 5, 1804; Sarah Alice, b. 
May 18, 1806 ; Cynthia Ann, b. March 19, 1808 ; Martha, b. Oct. 28, 
1809 ; Benjamin Phelps, b. Sept. 24, 1814 ; George Williams, b. Aug. 
4, 1817 ; Mary Eliza, b. Dec. 28, 1821. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 857 

WEBSTER FAMILIES 

The Webster families of King's County have as their first New 
England ancestor John Webster, an early Governor of the Colony 
of Connecticut, who is said to have come from Warwickshire. 

Abraham! Webster, b. in Lebanon, Conn., Jan. 1, 1736-7 (Noah, 
George, Thomas, Governor John), m, in Lebanon, Sept. 12, 1758, 
Margaret White, of Conventry, Conn. He removed from Lebanon to 
Cornwallis, in 1760, and had a grant of land "where the Isaac Reid 
place was, near where the old Campbellite meeting-house stood, on 
the Upper Dyke road." Children: 

i Abraham, Jr., b. April 13, 1759, in Lebanon, m. Polly 

Jeffers. 
ii Daniel, b. Oct. 4, 1761, in Cornwallis. 
iii Margaret, b. March 6, 1762, m. to David Bentley, and re- 
moved to Stewiacke. 
iv Isaac, b. July 28, 1763, m. Abigail English. 

V Olive, b. Feb. 20, 1765, m. to Samuel Godfrey, and removed 

to Stewiacke. 
vi David, b. Dec. 25, 1767, d. Jan. 18, 1768. 
vii Cyrus, b. Sept. 18, 1769, m. Elizabeth English. 
viii Darius, twin with Cyrus, m. Elizabeth Kennedy. 

Abraham^, Jr., Webster (Abraham^), b. April 13, 1759, m. Feb. 

28, 1786, Polly Jeffers, a ward or adopted child of Mrs. Elizabeth 

(Harrington) and her 2nd husband, Christopher Knight. Children: 

i Margaret, b. Nov. 28, 1786. 

ii Catherine, b. Nov. 28, 1786. 

iii Daniel, b. Oct. 13, 1788. 

iv Sarah, b. Dec. 19, 1790. 

V Abraham, 3rd, b. Jan. 7, 1793. 
vi Isaac, b. Jan. 17, 1795. 

vii Jacob, b. Jan. 17, 1797. 

viii Charlotte, b. Oct. 25, 1799. 

ix John, b. June 10, 1802. 

X Asael, b. Sept. 2, 1804, m. Hepzibah Pearson, and d. in 
West Cornwallis, Sept. 28, 1868. One of his sons is 
the eminent David Webster, M. D., specialist in 
diseases of the eye and ear. Dr. Webster was b. in 
Cambridge, West Cornwallis, July 16, 1842, and edu- 
cated, first at Rev. Wm. SommerviUe 's School, then 
at the Prov, Normal School. His medical education 



858 KING'S COUNTY 

he received at Bellevue, N. Y., where he graduated 
in 1868. Long a noted physician in N. Y. City, he is 
a member of important medical and other societies, 
and clubs. He has written much for medical journals, 

Isaac2 Webster (Abrahami), b. July 28, 1763, m. Dec. 4, 1793, 

Abigail, dau. of John and Christina English. Children: 

i Augustine, b. 
ii Dudamia, b. April 6, 1795. 
iii Hannah, b. Sept. 1, 1797. 
iv Christina, b. Sept. 1, 1797. 

(Christina was m. to Holmes Morton.) 

Cyrus2 Webster (Abrahami), b. Sept. 18, 1769, m. Nov. 28, 1799, 

Elizabeth, dau. of Joel English. Children : 

i Jane, b. March 21, 1802. 

ii Margaret, b. Sept. 15, 1804. 

iii Mary Alice, b. June 15, 1806. 

iv Elizabeth, b. March 21,1808. 

V Olive, b. Dec. 4, 1809. 

vi George Augustus, b. Sept. 23, 1811. 

vii Thomas William, b. Sept. 26, 1813. 

Isaa-c^ Webster, M. D., (Moses, Noah, George, Thomas, Governor 
John), a nephew of Abraham, the Cornwallis grantee, was b. in 
Mansfield, Conn., June 26, 1766. His father was Moses and his 
mother Elizabeth (Bennett) Webster, a dau. of William Bennett, of 
Mansfield, and he was their eldest child. (The others were: 
Lucretia, b. Feb. 3, 1770, m. to Thomas Newcomb; Augustine; 
Jerusha, b. Oct. 17, 1789, m. to Gorham Newcomb; and six more; 
all recorded in Mansfield, Conn.) Dr. Isaac Webster is said to 
have studied medicine in Edinburgh and to have had the advantage 
of foreign travel. He m. in Cornwallis, Oct. 30, 1794, Prudence, 
dau. of David and Ann Bentley, b. May 10, 1773. He d. Oct. 29, 
1851. His wife d. Feb. 15, 1851. Children : 

i Cynthia, b. Nov. 30, 1795, m. to Samuel Morton, and had 
2 daus., one of whom, Mary Elizabeth, was m., Nov. 
21, 1841, to Andrew Barclay, of Shelburne, N. S. 

ii William Bennett, M. D., b. Jan. 18, 1798, m. Wilhelmina 
Moore. 

iii Harriet, b. July 24, 1801, m. to Abraham Gesner, M. D. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 859 

iv Frederick Augustus, M. D., b. Jan. 15, 1804 or 1807, m. 

McNaughton, and practised in Yarmouth, N. S. 

He had an important family. 

V Luana, b. April 13, 1809, m. as his 3rd wife, to Thomas 
Lydiard, and had children: Jane, m, to William D. 
Harrington, of Halifax; Mary, m. to George E. 
Calkin, of Kentville ; Henry W., b. Dec. 17, 1837, 
Anna, dau. of William Harrington, and d. Feb. 24, 
1899, his widow later becoming the wife of Brenton 
Halliburton Dodge, M. P. P. ; Sarah, d. Oct. 21, 1849, 
aged 1 year and 10 months. Luana (Lydiard) d. Oct. 
30, 1865; her husband d. Oct. 28, 1878, in his 81st 
year. 

vi Henry Bentley, b. Sept. 21, 1811, m. Ina Mary Barclay. 

vii Elizabeth Ann, b. March 15, 1816, m. to James Martin, 
and had 2 daus. : Harriet, who m. Rand ; Pru- 
dence, m. to John C. Woodworth. 

William Bennett2 Webster, M. D., (Isaac, M. D.), b. Jan. 18, 1798, 

m. Sept. 11, 1826, Wilhelmina, dau. of Col. William Charles and 
Elizabeth (Harrington) Moore, and d. April 4, 1861. His wife d. 
April 10, 1885. They are buried at Oak Grove Cemetery. Children : 

i William Frederick, m. (1) Prudence Davison, who d. 
Oct. 10, 1861, aged 34, (2) Fanny Steadman, (3) 

. By his 1st wife he had children : Charles W., 

m. Ruth, dau. of Robert and Harriet (Steadman) 
Harrington ; Frank, m. Josephine Lawrence ; Norman, 
d. young. By his 2nd wife he had 3 children, 2 of 
whom d. young. By his 3rd wife he had 1 
son, Frederick. William Frederick Webster d. Feb. 
1886, aged 59. 

ii Edmund Jones, m. Margaret Ann Kidston, only dau. of 
Henry, Jr., and Catherine (Kidston) Gesner, and had 
children: William; Mary, m. as his 2nd wife to 
David Henry Eaton. Edmund Jones Webster d. 
April 25, 1871, aged 36. 

iii Emeline, m. to Edward Best, and had 2 sons. She d. Sept. 
15, 1864, aged 36. 

iv Charles, d. very young. 

A young member of this branch of the Webster family, who lost 

his life in an heroic effort to save the lives of two little boys who 

were in danger of drowning at Evangeline Beach, deserves especial 

mention here. This was Robert Webster, a young son of William 



860 KING'S COUNTY 

Webster (Edmund Jones, William Bennett, M. D.), to whom an 
appropriate monument has been reared in Oak Grove Cemetery. 
He is rightly remembered and honoured as a young hero. 

Henry Bentley Webster (Isaac, M. D.), b. Sept. 21, 1811, m., about 
1844, Ina Mary, only dau. of James Barclay, of Shelbume, b. Jan. 4, 
1823. He d. Jan. 3, 1879. Mrs. Webster d. May 14, 1864. Children : 

i Ina Kate Barclay, m. to Alfred Augustus DeWolf. 

ii Alice Elizabeth, Deaconess of the Protestant Episcopal 

Church, 
iii Barclay, M. P. P., m. Ethel Sophia, dau. of Col. Leverett 

De Veber Chipman, M. P., and had a son, Lieut. L. 

Beverley Barclay-Webster, H. M. King's Own Regt. 

See Personal Sketches. 
iv A twin who d. unnamed. 
V Mary Cogswell, m. to Rev. Joseph Hogg, and died in 

Winnipeg, Canada, 
vi Henry Bentley, Jr., M. D., m. Harriet Emma, dau. of 

Andrew D wight and Ajin (Harris) DeWolf, and has 

two daughters. 

vii Edith Maud, m. to Pitfield. 

viii EUa, d. young. 

ix Anna Maria, m. to James Anderson Coleman, M. D., and 

has one dau., Edith. 
X Arthur Douglas, M. D., a leading physician in Edinburgh, 

G. B., m. Mary, dau. of Rev. John Logan, and has 

children, 
xi Laleah Stevenson, m. to James Thomson, son of George 

and Eunice S. (Lovett) Thomson, of Halifax, and 

Wolfville, and had one daughter, 
xii Fanny Cogswell, m. to William H. Chase, merchant of 

Wolfville, and has children. 



THE WELLS OR WELLES FAMILY 

The founder of the Wells family in King's County was Capt 
Judah Wells, a great-great grandson of Hugh Welles, brother of 
Thomas Welles, governor of Connecticut in 1655 and '56, and again 
in 1658 and '59. These brothers, who are said to have been related 
to Lord Say and Seal, came from London, Eng., in the Susan and 



FAMILY SKETCHES 861 

Ellen, in 1630, Thomas it is further said, having been private secre- 
tary to Lord Say and Seal. Capt. Judah Wells, son of Jonathan 
(Noah, Thomas) and Mary (Newton) Wells b. in Colchester, Conn., 
and bap. there April 9, 1738, m. Jan. 31, 1760, Ann, dau. of Isaac 
and Abigail (Skinner) Bigelow, and d. May 19, 1779. He is buried 
at Upper Canard. Coming to Cornwallis with the other Connecticut 
people, he bought of Branch Blackmore, land "lying on the road to 
Stephen Qiase's mills." The Wells family in the second generation 
was one of the most important in the county. Children ; 

i Eunice Olcott, d. Nov. 17, 1763. 

ii Capt. Judah, Jr., b. Jan. 5, 1763, m. Eleanor Simpson. 

iii Asael, b. Aug. 20, 1764, m. Eliza Prescott. 

iv Eunice, b. Sept. 26, 1766, m. Jan. 17, 1788, to David Eaton, 

and had 10 children. 

V Anne, b. Dee. 26, 1768, m. to Silas Bishop. 

vi Mary (and a twin unnamed), b. Feb. 15, 1770. 

vii John, M. P. P., b. Sept. 28, 1772, m. Prudence Eaton, 

viii Newton, b. July 24, 1774, m. Mary Bishop, 

ix Asenath, b. Dec. 31, 1777. 

X Martha, b. Nov. 2, 1779. 

xi Levi, b. May 14, 1782, m. Alice Woodworth. 

Capt. Judali2 Wells (Capt. Judah^), b. Jan. 5, 1763, m. April 13, 

1763, Eleanor, dau. of John and Eleanor Simpson. He d. June 13, 

1791. Children: 

i Charlotte, b. May 29, 1785. 

ii Eunice, b. Sept. 30, 1787. 

iii James Simpson, b. Sept. 23, 1789, m. his cousin Ann Wells 
(probably a dau. of Asael and Eliza (Prescott) 
Wells), and had a son James Simpson, who lived in 
New York, and three daus., one of whom lived in 
London, Eng., one Lydia Norris, m. to Frederick 
Brown, of Wolfville, and one d. in Halifax, Tinm. 
The record of James Simpson Wells is as follows: 
He was educated at Eton, in England, and at 16 
entered the Royal Navy, as Captain's clerk. Two 
years later he was made purser. He served in several 
ships, one the Centurion, which was the Receiving 
Ship at Halifax when the Shannon arrived with the 
Chesapeake. Later Mr. Wells settled in what is now 
New Ross, Lunenburg Co. From there, in 1830, he 
went to Chester, where he became a J. P., and filled 



862 KING'S COUNTY 

other public offices. He d. at Chester, May 10, 
1846, in his 57th year. 

AsaeF Wells, (Capt. Judahi), b. Aug. 20, 1764, m. April 12, 1792 

(by Rev. John Payzant), Eliza dau. of Jonathan Prescott, M. D., 

and sister of Charles Ramage Prescott, M. L. C. She d. June 3, 

1800, and is buried at Uppard Canard. Children: 

i Nancy, b. Dec. 24, 1792, at Amherst, N. S. 

ii Charlotte, b. Aug. 5, 1794, in CornwaUis. 

iii Asael, Jr., b. June 7, 1797, at Halifax, 

iv Eliza, b. July 24, 1799, at Halifax. 

(There was also, probably, Ann, who was m, to her cousin, 

James Simpson Wells.) 

John2 Wells, M. P. P. (Capt. Judah^), b. Sept. 28, 1772, m. Oct. 
31, 1793, Prudence, youngest dau. of David and Deborah (White) 
Eaton, b. Oct. 13, 1774. They were m. by Rev. Wm. Twining, of St. 
John's Church, the banns having first been published. Children: 

i Judah, b. Oct. 19, 1794, m. Ruth, dau. of Stephen Sheffield, 

b. July 11, 1797. 
ii Matilda, b. March 13, 1797, m. Jan. 24, 1816, to John 

Belcher, Sr. See the Belcher Family, 
iii Asenath, b. Sept. 7, 1799, m. Jan. 10, 1823, to Capt. John, 

son of Stephen Sheffield, and had a dau. Prudence, 

m. to George Garland Starr, of Pernambuco, South 

America, 
iv Eunice, b. Jan. 8, 1802, d. aged 13. 
v Sophia, b. Feb. 22, 1804, m. to Alex. McPhail. 
vi Prudence, b. March 30, 1806, m. to Amos, son of Stephen 

Sheffield, 
vii Mary Jane, b. July 14, 1808, m. to Samuel, son of Thomas 

and Rebecca Lowden, b. Dec. 20, 1787. 
viii John Newton, b. April 19, 1813, m. Susan Hisco. 



THE WELTON FAMILY 

The Welton family, primarily an Annapolis County family, was 
founded in Annapolis by Ezekiel Welton, a church warden of Trinity 
Church, Wilmot, b. it is said in 1745, d. in 1839. He is undoubtedly 
mentioned in Anderson's History of Waterbury, Conn., as the son 
of Thomas Welton, Jr., and is there said to have m. Oct. 23, 1765, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 863 

Mercy Welton, dan. of Ebenezer Welton. His children are there 
given lis: Eric, b. Feb. 8, 1768; Cephas, b. April 25, 1771; Gracina, 
b. March 7, 1774. From the History of Annapolis we learn that he 
m. (2) Mrs. Mary Nicholas, nee Richards. According to the History 
of Annapolis, his son Eric m. Elizabeth Smith, and had 14 children, 
who are given in the History. One of Eric's sons, Thomas Welton, 
m. Jan. 23, 1821, Mrs. Dorothy (Van Buskirk) Ryerson, dan. of 
Capt. Abram Van Buskirk, and widow of Martin Ryerson, and had 
children born in Aylesford: John Smith, b. Dee. 16, 1821; James 
Austin, b. Oct. 6, 1823 ; William Kerr, b. July 1, 1825 ; Thomas, Jr., 
b. Jan. 11, 1828 ; Isabella, b. Nov. 29, 1829. 

According to the History of Annapolis, Cephas Welton (Ezekiel) 
m. in 1794, Lucy Parker, and had 9 children. One of these Sidney, 
b. in 1800, m. Isabel Morse and also settled in Aylesford, where he 
had the following children born : Allen, b. Sept. 2, 1828 ; Amariah, 
b. March 29, 1830; Rev. Prof. Daniel Morse, D. D., b. July 21, 1832; 
Cephas, b. March 5, 1833, d. Nov. 7, 1834; Alfred Parker, b. July 
15, 1836; Lucy Jane, b. Oct. 7, 1838; Cephas Burpee; Sydney, 
graduated at Acadia College in 1881. 

Several members of the Welton family have been prominent in 
King's County, one of whom is the late Rev. Professor Daniel Morse 
Welton, Ph. D., Leipzig 1878, D. D. Acadia 1884, who was pastor 
of the Baptist Church at Windsor, N. S., from 1857 to '74, Professor 
of Systematic Theology at Acadia College from 1874 to '76, Pro- 
fessor of Hebrew and Theology at Acadia from 1878 to '83, and 
Professor of Old Testament Interpretation at McMaster University, 
Toronto, from 1883 to 1904. He was also the author of several 
books. He d. at Toronto in 1904. 

In the Crown Land Office in Halifax under date of May 31, 1810, is 
recorded a grant of land as follows: ''To John Wiswell, Ezekiel 
Welton, and John Wiswell, Jr., church wardens of Trinity Church 
in the Township of Wilmot, County of Annapolis, for the use of 
a public school, the lot or tract of land reserved for that purpose 
during the administration of the late Governor Parr, containing 403 
acres and 2-10 of an acre, on the north side of the Annapolis 



864 KING'S COUNTY 

Eiver and Wilmot, etc. ; for the support of a public school for the 
use of said Parish or Township." 



THE WEST FAMILY 

On the first Cornwallis Town Grant are the names of Stephen 
and "William West, and on the second the name of Jabez "West. 
"What the relationship between them was, or where they were di- 
rectly from we do not know. The Cornwallis Town Book says that 
Elizabeth, daughter of "William and Jean "West was born in Ro- 
chester, Mass. If this was so, then "William and Jean "West lived for 
a time in Rochester, but an article on the West family in the 
N. E. Hist, and Gen. Register, vol, 60, does not mention them. From 
this article, however, one may gather that Jabez and Stephen West's 
direct ancestry is to be looked for in eastern Connecticut. 

William^ and Jean West, of Cornwallis, had children : 

i Mary, m. Oct. 12, 1770, to John North, from Birmingham, 
England, and became the ancestress of the Corn- 
wallis North family. 

ii Elizabeth, b. in Rochester, Mass., Feb. 9, 1754, m. to 
Charles Tupper, See the Tupper Family. 

iii Deborah, m. Jan. 2, 1773, to Stephen Strong, 

iv Seth, m. Dec. 13, 1781, Mary, dau. of Samuel and Alice 
Grossman. Children: Samuel, b. Aug. 25, 1782; 
Jane, b. June 21, 1784, and probably others. 

V Thomas, m. Sept. 7, 1784, Sarah, dau. of Simon and Sarah 

Porter, 
vi Francis Triall (?), m. Wealthy Kinsman. 
Capt, Stephen^ and Margery West had children : 

i Elijah, m. Dec. 11, 1771, Esther, dau. of Stephen and Han- 
nah Loomer. 

ii Abner, m. Nov. 10, 1784, Ann, dau. of Thomas and Mary 
Farrell. 

iii Mary, b. Feb., 1764, in Cornwallis. 

iv Jane, b. Dec. 25, 1766, 

V Stephen, Jr., m. Sept. 1, 1794, Godfrey. Children: 

Lucy, b. May 28, 1795; Elisha, b, Nov. 13, 1797; 
John, b. Aug. 23, 1799; Olive, b. Nov. 26, 1801; 
Stephen, 3rd, b. Dec. 18, 1802; Edward, b. Dec. 30, 
1804; Ruth, b. June 1, 1807; Jonathan, b. May 3, 
1810; Jane, b. Oct. 30, 1812. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 865 

Jabezi West m. in Cornwallis, Nov. 30, 1763, Ruth, dau. of Capt. 
Eliakim and Mary (Bassett) Tupper, b. in Sandwich, Mass.; and 
removed from Cornwallis to Machias, Maine. In the Revolution he 
was a captain on the American side. Children: 

i Joel, b. July 2, 1764. 

ii Drusilla, b. July 9, 1766. 

iii Rebecca, b. Dec. 15, 1767. 

iv Eliakim Tupper, b. July, 1769. The "Memorial of the 
Centennial Anniversary of Machias, Maine" (1863) 
says that they had also Stephen; and Mary, m. to 
Joel Foster. A genealogist of the Tupper family 
says they had besides the four bom in Cornwallis, 
Margery, Abigail, William T., Charlotte, Jabez, Jr., 
Joanna, Stephen H., Mary A., and Cyrus F. 

Francis Trialis (?) West (Williami), m. Dec. 29, 1786, Wealthy, 
dau. of Benjamin and Hannah Kinsman. Children: 

i Hannah, b. March 9, 1788. 

ii Elizabeth, b. July 18, 1790. 

iii William, b. Nov. 12, 1792. 

iv Paul, b. Jan. 10, 1795. 

V Benjamin Kinsman, b. Jan 24, 1797. 

vi Eunice, b. Oct. 31, 1798. 

vii Wealthy, b. Feb. 22, 1801. 

viii Jane, b. June 26, 1803. 

ix Lavinia, b. Dee. 5, 1805. 

X Henry Allen, b. May 1, 1808. 
An Elijah West, son of Elijah and Esther West, m. in Cornwallis, 
Oct. 13, 1815, Mary Coffin, dau of Prince and Experience Coffin. 
An Enoch West m. in Cornwallis, Feb. 18, 1819, Rosalind Brewster. 



THE WHEATON FAMILY 

Captain and Mary (Owen) Wheaton seem to have been the found- 
ers of the Wheaton family in King's County. Their children were: 
George, b. at St. George River, New England, Feb. 6, 1748-9, m. 
May 18, 1775, Susannah, dau, of Benjamin and Elizabeth Kinsman ; 
Lueana, a daughter, b. in Virginia, June 3, 1751 ; Caleb, Jr., b. July 
20, 1753; Joseph, b. Dec. 30, 1754; John, b. Aug. 9, 1756; Sarah, 
b. March 3, 1758 (the last 4 b. at Jamaica, L. I.) ; Edward Com- 



866 KING'S COUNTY 

wallis, b. Oct. 26, 1760 ; Letitia, b. Aug. 13, 1762 ; Comfort, b. Feb. 
24, 1765; Cynthia, b. May 8, 1767. 

John K. Wheaton, son of George and Susannah Wheaton, m. in 
Cornwallis, Nov. 28, 1804, Ann, dau. of Asael and Lucy Bentley. 
Children: William Henry, b. Dec. 10, 1805; James Edward, b. Oct. 
9, 1814 J John Bentley, b. May 25, 1817; Eobert, b. Feb. 20, 1822; 
Samuel, b. Aug. 30, 1825. 



THE WHIDDEN FAMILY 

The Whiddens of New England seem to have been settled princi- 
pally in Greenland, near Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In 1723 there 
were a James and a John Whidden in Greenland, and in the forces 
raised for the taking of Louisburg, a James Whidden, probably 
from this place, was a lieutenant. This James Whidden received his 
commission in the 1st Company of a New Hampshire Regt., March 
1, 1744, and it is very likely he who in 1761 became a grantee and 
one of the first settlers of Truro, Nova Scotia. 

Jamesi Whidden, the settler in Truro, m. (1) in New England, 

where his children were born. He m. (2) in Truro, Mrs. Mary 

Guild Lynds, widow of Jacob Lynds, of Onslow, N. S. He d. Dec. 

13, 1790. Children: 

i John, b 

ii Sarah, drowned near Truro, Aug. 12, 1770, aged 17. 

iii Elizabeth, m. Dec. 15, 1791, as his 2nd wife, to Rev. Hugh 

Graham, pastor of the Cornwallis Presbyterian 

Church (Mr. Graham's 1st wife, whom he m. in 

Scotland, was Elizabeth Brown.) 
iv David, b. in 1749, m. Sept. 29, 1774, Janet Dickie. 
V Samuel, b. in 1752, m. July 15, 1774, Abigail Newcomb. 
vi Simeon, b. in 1754, m. about 1775, Dorothy, 4th dau. of 

Capt. William and Jane (Barnes) Blair and settled 

in Stewiacke, He d. in 1800. His 5th son was Rev. 

John Blair Whidden, b. Nov. 21, 1791, a Baptist 

Minister. 

Johii2 Whidden (James^), settled in Cornwallis, and became there 
a J. P. and Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. He m. Elizabeth, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 867 

dau. of Jonathan and Mercy (Clark) Longfellow, b. in Notting- 
ham, N. H., July 17, 1741, d. in Cornwallis, June 2, 1830. He d. 
Sept. 14, 1794. Children: 

i Nancy, b. Aug. 18, 1760, m. Nov. 4, 1779, to John, son of 

Joseph and Alice Allison. See the Allison Family, 
ii Sarah, b. Jan. 30, 1763. 
iii James, b. Dec. 14, 1764. 
iv David, Dec. 7, 1766, m. Eunice Chipman. 

V Elizabeth, b. Dec. 15, 1768. 

vi Abigail, b. Feb. 25, 1772, in Gorham, Me., m. to Joseph 
Prescott, M. D., and d. in Great Barrington, Mass., 
while on a visit. 

vii Hannah, b. Sept. 29, 1774, m. Feb. 6, 1796, to Hon. Charles 
Eamage Prescott. See the Prescott Family. 

David^ Whidden (John2, James^), m. Oct. 6, 1794, Eunice, dau. of 

John and Eunice (Dickson) Chipman, b. June 30, 1778. Children: 

i John, b. May 29, 1797. ^ 
ii James, b. Jan. 20, 1799. 

iii Elizabeth Eunice, (and iv, a twin, b. dead) b. Sept. 28, 
1800. 

V George Chipman, b. Jan. 13, 1803. 
vi David, b. Aug. 24, 1805. 

vii Sarah Lavinia, b. Aug. 16, 1807. 

viii Elizabeth, b. Aug. 28, 1809. 

ix Maria Jane, b. Oct. 20, 1811. 

X Charles Prescott, b. Oct. 8. 1813. 

xi William COialoner, b. Oct. 8, 1813. 

xii Robert, b. Feb. 25, 1816. 

xiii Joseph, b. June 18, 1819. ' 

For further information concerning the Whiddens in Colchester 
county, see Thomas Miller's "First Settlers of Colchester County." 



THE WICKWIRE FAMILY 

John "Wickwire, born in England, who settled in Montville, New 
London, Conn., m. Nov. 6, 1676, Mary, dau. of George and Margery 
Tonge. In 1696 he, together with Edward DeWolf, George Chap- 
pell, Joseph Northrup, and Stephen DeWolf, received a grant of 
land in Voluntown, Conn. Oct. 14, 1704, he and John Beckwith re- 
ceived a grant in New London. He had, with other sons, Christopher, 



868 KING'S COUNTY 

who had a son Zebediah, who in 1763 settled in Horton, King's 
County; and Peter, who had a son, Captain Peter, who settled in 
Comwallis. 

Zebediahi Wickwire (Christopher, John), bap. Mar. 22, 1730, m. 

Sarah . It is no doubt from him that the Wickwire Dyke 

in Horton has its name. Children: 

i Zebediah, Jr., b. 1754, m. Mar. 18, 1779, in Horton, Tem- 
perance Clark. Children: Daniel, b. Jan. 26, 1780; 
David, b. Sept. 19, 1781, m. Abigail Little; Thomas, 
twin with David, m. Jerusha Reid; Greenleaf, b. 
Jan. 29, 1785; James, b. March 7, 1790, m. Oct. 26, 
1814, Abigail, dau. of James and Elizabeth Miner; 
Ephia, b. Oct. 10, 1797, m. Oct. 26, 1817, to Duncan 
Reid; Elizabeth, b. July 24, 1801. 

ii Amos, b. Nov. 17, 1756, m. in Cornwallis, Esther Atwell. 

iii Elizabeth, b. May 20, 1759, m. Oct. 30 or 20, 1777, to 
James Calkin, b. Jan. 27, 1757. 

iv Sarah, b. , m. Feb. 24, 1789, to Michael, son of Wil- 
liam and Catherine Wallace, and had children: Re- 
becca, b. May 11, 1791; William, b. July 13, 1794 
Margaret, b. Feb. 11, 1797; Daniel, b. Dec. 3, 1799 
John, b. Dec. 16, 1802; Michael, b. Apr. 7, 1805 
David, b. Nov. 2, 1808; Isaiah, b. Dec. 15, 1813. 

Captain Peter^ Wickwire (Peter, John), b. Mar. 11, bap. Mar. 
15, 1724, m. Rhoda Schofield. He d. Feb. 2, 1803. He was a grantee 
in Cornwallis. His first 4 children were b. in New London. Chil- 
dren: 

i Rachel, b. Apr. 26, 1748, m. (1) to Markorey, (2) 

May 29, 1780, to William Carlisle. 

ii Peter, 3rd, b. Sept. 1, 1751. 

iii Asa, b. Aug. 15, 1753, d. in 1795. 

iv Amy, b. Sept. 5, 1756, m. May 9, 1776, to Oliver, son of 
James and Grace Fox, of Cornwallis, and had 6 
children. 

v Betty, b. June 7, 1760, Sunday, *'in the harbour of Hor- 
ton, before the arrival of the inhabitants in the 
Township of Cornwallis." See the Comwallis Town 
Book. She was m. Aug. 8, 1780, to Daniel Huntley, 
of Horton, and had 2 children, Daniel and Peter, 

vi Rhoda, b. June 18, 1762, m. May 2, 1781, to Henry Mel- 
lon, and had 2 children. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 869 

vii Silas, b. June 18, 1766, m. Jan. 9, 1800, Prudence, dau. 
of Major William Canady. Children : Sarah, b. 
Nov. 4 or 24, 1800, m. Jan. 26, 1825, as his 1st wife, 
to Charles Elaton (John, David), b. May 6, 1802, and 
had 8 children; Peter, b. Feb. 10, 1802, m. Eliza 
Ann Rockwell; Sberman, b. Aug. 8, 1804, d. unm. ; 
William, b. Apr. 10, 1810, m. (1) Rebecca Burbidge, 
(2) Laviuia, dau. of David Eaton; Prudence, b. Dec. 
10, 1812, m. to Edward Eaton. (If this last statement 
is true, Edward Eaton must have been the son of 
James and Lucy (Famsworth) Eaton, and have 
m. (2) Dec. 29, 1840, Sarah Jane Manning, and 
lived at Bridgetown, Annapolis county) ; Major, b. 
Dec. 18, 1814. 

viii Prudence, b. Nov. 16, 1769, m. in 1787, to James Martin, 
b. in County Down, Ireland, who enlisted in the 
British Army at 18, was engaged in the American 
Revolution, reached Halifax in 1777 or '78, and then 
settled in King's County. Later he went to Shep- 
ody, N. B. They had a dau. Amy, b. Dec. 24, 1799, 
m. Feb. 12, 1823, to John Cleveland, of Hopewell, 
N. B. See the Cleveland Genealogy, p. 573. 

Peters Wickwire (Silas2, Capt. Peteri), b. Feb. 10, 1802, m. Apr. 
23, 1828, Eliza Ann, dau. of John Rockwell, and d. Apr. 11, 1873. 
Children: John Leander, M. P., b. June 11, 1832, merchant and 
ship-owner, of Canning, m. Nov. 20, 1866, Annie Alice Lawton, 
of St. John, N. B., and d. May 19, 1891 ; Rebecca, b. May 10, 1830 ; 
Ruth, b. Aug. 16, 1834 ; Prudence Amelia, b. Oct. 21, 1836, m. July 
9, 1862, to Stephen Sheffield; WiUiam Nathan, M. D., b. Nov. 18, 
1839, m. June 28, 1870, Margaret L., dau. of Hon. Alexander Keith, 
M. L. C, of Halifax ; Emily, b. May 28, 1842, m. to Silas Alward, of 
St. John, N. B. ; Laura, b. Nov. or May 25, 1844, m. as his 1st wife, 
to Edward M. Beekwith, of Canning, and d. Apr. 18, 1873; Eliza 
Adelia, b. June 25, 1847, d. young. 

The Wickwire family has had many important representatives 
in King's County and elsewhere in Canada. Among those who are 
living is William Nathan Wickwire, Esq., M. A., M. D., Vice Con- 
sul for the Netherlands at Halifax, for many years a leading phy- 
sician in Halifax, who m. as recorded above and has children, 



870 KING'S COUNTY 

Blanche Adelia, wife of Capt. H. M. Elliot, of the British Army, and 
William K. in British Columbia. Dr. Wiekwire graduated at 
Acadia University in 1860, to his M. A. in 1863, graduated in medi- 
cine at the University of Edinburgh in 1864, and then settled in 
Halifax. In 1866 he was appointed Government Assistant Health 
Officer for the port of Halifax, and in 1872 Chief Medical Officer 
for the port. The latter office he resigned in 1899. He has been 
Vice Consul for the Netherlands at Halifax for twenty years. 

John Leander Wiekwire, Esq., M. P., brother of Dr. William 
Nathan Wiekwire, represented King's County in the Dominion Par- 
liament from 1872 to 1874. He was an important merchant and 
ship-owner in Canning, and married as recorded above. His fam- 
ily is still conspicuously represented in the county. His eldest 
son is Harry Hamm Wiekwire, Esq., Barrister, B. A., M. P. P., 
who m. Sarah J. Lovitt of Yarmouth. His youngest son is Fred- 
erick William Wiekwire, who was for some years editor and pro- 
prietor of the Western Chronicle, at Kentville. He also m. a Miss 
Lovitt. John Leander Wiekwire 's daughter, Eliza Lawton, was 
m. in 1892 to E. A. Kirkpatriek, M. D., physician at Halifax. An- 
other daughter, Janie Thompson, is the wife of Col. Gilbert Lafay- 
ette Foster, M. D., Surgeon in the Canadian Army. A valuable 
Wiekwire Genealogy was published in the United States in 1909. 



THE WILLIAMS FAMILY 
Stephen Harding^ Williams, son of P. Graves and Damas 
(Damaris?) Williams, m. at Lebanon, Conn., May 26, 1758, Mercy, 
dau. of Ebenezer and Patience Bill, b. Sept. 17, 1735. They had 
children as follows: Elizabeth, b. Aug. 24, 1759, at Lebanon; 
Eunice, b. June 2, 1763, in Cornwallis ; Bill, b. Oct. 22, 1771 ; Amy, 
b. Dec. 4, 1775; Lydia, b. Jan. 4, 1778. Mrs. Mercy (Bill) Wil- 
liams was m. (2) to Corbet. Much information concerning 

the Williams family of Connecticut is to be gleaned from Miss 
Caulkins' History of New London, Baker's History of Montville, 
nine's "Early Lebanon," and other books, but a complete gene- 



FAMILY SKETCHES 871 

alogy of the family can be made out ouly by consulting yet unp.ub- 
lished records. We regret that we cannot carry the family fur- 
ther in King's County. 



THE WILLOUGHBY FAMILY 

Samueli Willoughby, M. D., M. P. P., son of Joseph and Thank- 
ful (Bliss) Willoughby, was b. in New London, Aug. 20, 1730, 
and received a grant of land in Cornwallis in 1761. His father, 
together with a John Willoughby, first appears in Norwich, 
Conn., where he was admitted to the town by vote, Dec. 5, 1721. 
In 1722 Joseph Willoughby bought land in the north parish of 
New London, and there as the result of a fall from his horse two 
days before, died April 10, 1751. The inventory of his es- 
tate mentions among other things, a silver-hilted sword, a silver 
tankard, and a Negro woman, **Nit." Joseph Willoughby m. in 
Norwich, Apr. 6, 1719, Thankful Bliss, dau. of Samuel and Ann 
(Elderkin) Bliss, of Norwich, b. Mar. 7, 1700. His children were: 
Ann, b. Jan. 20, 1720-1, m. to Timothy Corliss; Bliss, b. Dec. 15, 
1721, m. (1) in 1739, Hannah Corliss, and had several children, we 
do not know how many; Joseph, b. May 6, 1724, m, Bridget, dau. 
of Christopher and Elizabeth Wickwire, and sister of Zebediah 
Wickwire, who came to King's County; Samuel, M. D., b. Aug. 20, 
1730, m. Alice English ; John, M. D., b. Dec. 21, 1733, in Glorianna 
Edwards of Stratford, Conn., and lived at Stratford. . Of the 
brothers of Dr. Samuel Willoughby, Bliss was one of a committee 
of four from Conn, (the others were Benjamin Kimball, Edward 
Mott, and Samuel Starr, Jr.) to the Nova Scotia Government in 
reference to the settlement of Connecticut families at Chignecto, 
In 1745 a Separatist Church was formed at Bean Hill, in Norwich, 
and between 1757 and '59 Bliss Willoughby was one of its minis- 
ters or teachers. His life thereafter was perhaps spent in minis- 
terial work, his later affiliation being with the Baptist body. It 
does not appear that he was ever in Nova Scotia but at the time 
mentioned above. Dr. Samuel Willoughby is mentioned in Mur- 



872 KING'S COUNTY 

doch's History of Nova Scotia as having applied in 1761 "for 
another half right" of land in Cornwallis, and is called in the no- 
tice "a, person of considerable substance." He m. in Cornwallis, 
Aug. 28, 1760, Isaac Deschamps, Esq., officiating, Alice, dau. of 
John and Abigail (Newcomb) English, b. Oct. 2, 1738, who after 
Dr. Willoughby's death was m., Dec. 23, 1790, by Rev. William 
Twining, Rector of St. John's Church, to David Eaton, whose 
first wife Deborah (White) had d. May 20, 1790. Precisely when 
Dr. Willoughby d. we do not know, but he is undoubtedly buried 
in the Chipman's Corner churchyard, not far from which was his 
home. Children : 

i Sarah, b. Feb. 8, 1762, m. to Prince, probably a son 

of Christopher Prince, M. P. P., of Annapolis 
county, 
ii Samuel, Jr., b. Oct. 6, 1763, sailed from Halifax for some 
U. S. port and is believed to have been lost at sea, 
unm. 
iii Olive, b. Feb. 5, 1765, m. Dec. 29, 1784, in St. John's 
Parish, Cornwallis, to Jonathan Randall, son of 
David and Kezia (Davidson) Randall, b. in Colches- 
ter, Conn., Apr. 2, 1751. 
iv Charlotte, b. June 30, 1767. 
V Augustus, b. Feb. 2, 1771. 
Augustus^ Willoughby (SamueU, M. D.), b. in Cornwallis, Feb. 
2, 1771, m. Mar. 6, 1794, Elizabeth, dau. of David and Susanna 
(Potter) Starr, b. Dec. 1, 1773, d. Dec. 12, 1837, whose brothers 
were Samuel Starr (the author's grandfather). Col. John Starr, 
M. P. P., of Halifax, David, William, James, and Daniel Starr. 
Children : 

i Minetta, b. Aug. 1, 1795, m. (1) in 1812, to Robert Bath, 
to whom she bore 6 children, (2) as his 2nd 
wife, to Israel Longley. See Calnek-Savary Hist, of 
Annapolis. 

ii Seraphina, b. Sept. 19, 1796, m. as his 2nd wife, to James 
Noble Shannon, of Halifax, N. S., and was the step- 
mother of Hon. Judge James Noble Shannon, 
M. L. C, Q. C, D. C. L. 

iii Lueretia, b. Apr. 8, 1798, m. to Benjamin Fullerton. 

iv Samuel Augustus, b. Jan. 1, 1800, m. (1) Mrs. Margaretta 
(Duffield) Thompson, (2) Mrs. Estelle (de Lausette) 
Cook. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 873 

V Elizabeth, b. Oct. 10, 1801, m. (1) about 1821, to James 
Edward Fellows, (2) to his brother, Benjamin Smith 
Fellows, and had by her 1st marriage a dau. Eliza- 
beth, m. to William Elliott of Boston. By her 2nd mar- 
riage she had : James Edward, b. in 1837, m. Charlotte 
S. Morse ; Minetta, b. in 1829, m. to Joseph F. Ballis- 
ter, of Boston (brother of Mrs. Charles Theodore 
Russell of Cambridge) ; Margaret, b. in 1832, d. 
young; Anna, b. in 1835, m. to Hon. Samuel Leon- 
ard Shannon, of Halifax; Maria S., b. in 1839, m. 
to John M. Parker, of Berwick, and d. in 1892; 
Lucretia, b. in 1839, d. young; Bertha, b. in 1845, 
m. to John R. Michie. 
vi Clarissa, b. Mar. 23, 1804, m. to Joseph Anderson, of An- 
napolis county. 
vii Susanna Alice, b. Feb. 27, 1811, m. to John Lawrence, of 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 
These Willoughby children were all baptized in St. John's Parish, 
Cornwallis. 

Samuel Augustus^ Willoughby (Augustus^, Samuel^, M. D,), b. 
in Cornwallis, Jan. 1, 1800, m. (1) in Brooklyn, N. T., Margaretta, 
dau. of John, M. D., and Margaretta (Debevoise) Duffield, of Brook- 
lyn, (2) Mrs. Estelle (deLausette) Cook. Samuel Augustus Wil- 
loughby removed early to New York, where he became a mer- 
chant, and banker. He lived for many years in Brooklyn, where 
an avenue, Willoughby Avenue, is named for him. His later years 
were spent at Saratoga, N. Y. He and his family are buried in 
Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn. By his 1st wife he had fejvo 
daus, : Anna Augusta, b. in 1822, m. to Rev. George Duffield, D. D. ; 
Margaretta, m. in 1846, Hon. Judge Edwards Pierrepont, LL. D., 
Attorney General of the U. S., and from 1876 to 1878, Envoy Extra- 
ordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the U. S. at the Court 
of St. James. The Pierreponts had 2 children: Margaretta Wil- 
loughby, m. to Leonard Forbes Beckwith, C. E. ; Edward Wil- 
loughby, Charge d' Affaires of the IT. S., in Italy, who d. Apr. 16, 
1885. By his 2nd wife, Samuel Augustus WiUoughby had one 
son, Hugh, well known in Philadelphia, Newport, R. I., and St. Au- 
gustine, Florida, with a place at Newport, R. I., known as "The 
Chalet." 



874 KING'S COUNTY 

THE WITTER FAMILY 

The origin of the Witter family in America is given by Savage as 
follows : William Witter, an early settler at Lynn, Mass., had a wife 
Annis, and children, Hannah, and Josiah, who m. Feb. 25, 1662, 
Elizabeth Wheeler and had : Elizabeth, b. March 15, 1663, and Mary, 
b. Feb. 20, 1665. From other records we learn that he had a son, 
Ebenezer, b. in 1668, who was m. May 5, 1693, and had a son Joseph, 
b. June 1, 1698. The latter married, Aug. 13, 1722, Elizabeth Gore, 
and had children: Samuel, b. May 28, 1723; Joseph, b. Dec. 15, 
1724; Ezra, b. Jan. 22, 1729; Hannah, b. Oct. 3, 1730; Ebenezer, 
b. Sept. 11, 1732 ; Elijah, b. April 7, 1735 ; Eunice, b. Dec. 8, 1740. 
Elizabeth (Gore) Witter, the mother of these children was the 
eldest child of Samuel and Hannah (Draper) Gore, of Roxbury, 
Mass., and Norwich, Conn., and sister of Moses Gore, the Corn- 
wallis grantee. She was a first cousin of John Gore, the father 
of Christopher Gore, the noted Governor of Massachusetts. 

SamueP Witter, eldest son of Josepji and Elizabeth (Gore) Wit- 
ter, b. May 28, 1723, in Norwich, Conn., m. (1) Sarah Calkin, 

(2) , (3) in the autumn of 1760, Anna, dau. of Capt. Joseph 

and Mary (Wheeler) Prentice, of New London, and became a 
grantee in Horton. With his children, Samuel, Jr., b. June 20, 
1752, a son by his 1st wife, and Sarah and Amy, also probably by 
his 1st wife, he reached Nova Scotia, June 4, 1760, but that autumn 
he returned to New London and m. Anna Prentice, who bore him 
at least two children: Joseph Prentice, b. Jan. 11, 1766, m. Lucy 
Turner, widow; and Anna, who became the 2nd wife of Jehiel 
DeWolf, Jr., of Horton, and who d., as did her husband, in New 
York City, and is perhaps buried in the cemetery at Bloomfield, 
N. J. Samuel Witter d. in Horton, Feb. 22, 1767, in his 44th year. 

Samuel Witter, Jr., (Samuel), b. June 20, 1752, m. in Horton, 
April 14, 1774, Margaret, dau. of Jehiel DeWolf, Sr., and his wife 
Phebe (Cobb), b. in Killingworth, Conn., in 1755 or '57, who after 
Samuel Witter 's death, was m. to James Brown. She d. March 16, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 875 

1803, ''in her 48th year." Samuel Witter, Jr., d. Dec. 12, 1789. 
Children of Samuel, Jr., and Margaret Witter: 

i Sarah, b. Feb. 4, 1775. 
ii Elisha, b. Dec. 25, 1776. 
iii Daniel, b. June 19, 1779. 
iv Thomas, b. July 10, 1781, d. Jan. 20, 1784. 
V Emma, b. Nov. 1, 1783. 
vi Olive, b. Sept. 14, 1784. 
vii Ezra, b. Jan. 6, 1787. 

viii Samuel, 3rd., b. July 6, 1789, m. (1) Dec. 31, 1812, Mrs. 
Eunice Sharp,, who d. Sept. 28, 1819. Children: 
Daniel, b. Jan. 5, 1814; John William, b. July 31, 
1815; Edward. He m. (2) Sept. 26, 1821, Mrs. Han- 
nah (Bishop) Reid, dau. of George and Jane (Bur- 
bidge) Bishop, and then settled in Canaan, Horton. 
Children by 2nd wife: James Samuel, b. Dec. 5, 
1822, d. in 1890; Margaret Jane; George Nelson; 
Henry B. ; Laleah Adelaide; Rachel L., m. to Wil- 
liam John Wallace, Esq., of Canaan, Horton; Anna 
Prentice; T. H. Burpee. 
[Mrs. Margaret (DeWolf ) Witter Brown by her second marriage 
to James Brown, had children : Rachel Brown, m. to Elisha Harris, 
and removed to Buffalo, N. Y. ; James Brown, also removed to 
Buffalo.] 

On the Horton Town Book is recorded the marriage, undoubtedly 
in New England, Nov. 17, 1757, of Esther Atwill to Amos Witter, 
"b. in New England," An Anne Witter was m. in Horton, Aug. 17, 
1773 to John Turner; it seems probably that she was the dau. of 
Samuel Witter, the grantee, by his 1st wife. An Anne Witter was 
b. in Horton, Jan. 20, 1804. 



THE WOOD FAMILY 
James Wood m. in Cornwallis, Apr. 10, 1767, Bridget, dau. of 
Ebenezer and Patience Bill. 

Ephraim and Mary Wood had children b. in Cornwallis : Susan- 
nah, b. Jan. 3, 1777; Mary, b. Nov. 2, 1779; Ephraim, b. Oct. 27, 
1780; Charles, b. Jan. 15, 1783, m. Jan. 26, 1808, Ann dau. of John 
and Abigail Burbidge; Samuel, b. Nov. 20, 1785, m. Apr. 3, 1810, 



876 KING'S COUNTY 

Elizabeth, dau. of Daniel and Lydia Parker; William, b. May 16, 
1787; Sarah, b. March 27, 1789; Thomas, m. Oct. 30, 1814, Mar- 
garet (?), dau. of Frederick and Charity Butler. 

Enoch Wood, son of Daniel and Lucy Wood, m. Nov. 29, 1813, 
Elizabeth, dau. of John and Mary North. They had children: 
Mary, b. Apr. 30, 1815 ; Daniel, b. Mar. 29, 1817 ; Andoniram Judson, 
b. Jan. 29, 1819; Jacob and Isaac, twins, b. Apr. 26, 1820; Lucy, 
b. Sept. 1, 1822. 



WOODWORTH FAMILIES 

The Woodworth families of King's County are all descended 
from Walter Woodworth, who is said to have come to N. E. with 
Governor Winthrop in 1630. The name of the family he founded 
in N. E. was at first Woodward, but in passing from Mass. to R. L, 
it became Woodworth. The Woodworth grantees in Cornwallis 
were Amasa, Benjamin, Silas, Thomas, and William Woodworth. 
In Horton, grants were given to Benjamin and Joseph Woodworth, 
the latter being a son of Ebenezer (Benjamin, Walter, Walter), 
and b. in Lebanon, Oct. 19, 1724. In Falmouth, Hants county, 
there was also a family, founded by Thomas Woodworth, son of 
Elihu (Hezekiah, Walter, Walter), b. in Little Compton, R. I., 
Aug. 3, 1734, m. (1) Sept. 12, 1755, Judith Briggs, (2) in Falmouth, 
June 12, 1762, Margaret McCurdy. Amasa of Cornwallis was a 
son of Ebenezer (Benjamin, Walter, Walter), of Lebanon, Conn., b. 
there April 4, 1727; Benjamin of Cornwallis was probably a son of 
Ezekiel (Benjamin, Walter, Walter), and b. in Conn, in 1730; 
Silas was a son of Ichabod (Benjamin, Walter, Walter), and was 
b. in Lebanon, Mar. 22, 1725; Thomas was a son of Isaac (Isaac, 
Walter), and was b. in Norwich, July 7, 1826; William, according 
to Dr. Brechin's manuscript, was a son of Daniel (Isaac, Walter) 
and was b. in Norwich, Conn., Oct. 3, 1732. For fuller light on 
this family see a Genealogy giving completely the earliest gener- 
ations, published by William Atwater Woodworth in 1898; and 
a sketch in the Chute Genealogies, 



FAMILY SKETCHES 877 

Silas Woodworth, b. in Lebanon, Mar. 22, 1725, m. Sept. 22, 1746, 
Sarah, dau. of Richard and Mary English. He came to Cornwallis 
in the ship IVolfe, in May, 1760, and d. there, Sept. 26, 1790. His 
wife d. May 29, 1808, aged 74. Children : 

i Silas, b. Mar. 21, 1747, m. Oct. 5, 1768, Zerviah, dau. of 



ii John, b. Feb. 17, 1749, m. Submit Newcomb. 

iii Solomon, b. Apr. 16, 1751, m. July 26, 1772, Hannah, dau. 
of Moses and Mary (English) Dewey, b. Sept. 14, 
1753, and had 6 children. Of these, the eldest, Dan, 
b. Feb. 18, 1773, m. in 1794, Deborah Freeman West, 
and d. about 1846. The third son of Dan was Eben- 
ezer Foster Woodworth, b. June 5, 1802, who m. 
Mar. 21, 1826, Anne, dau. of Alfred and Ann (Bige- 
low) Skinner, and had among other children, Alfred 
Skinner Woodworth, b. April 24, 1836, in Horton, 
a well known merchant and philanthropist of Bos- 
ton; residence, 204 Commonwealth Avenue. Mr. 
Alfred Skinner Woodworth m. (1) Apr. 23 1857, 
Anna Gorton Grafton, who d. Sept. 27, 1883. He m. 
(2), Oct. 27, 1886, Mrs. Sara Elizabeth (Campbell) 
Tucker. By his 1st marriage he had children: Ger- 
trude, m. to Frank E. James; Herbert (B. A. Har- 
vard) m. Grace Greenleaf ; Arthur Vernon, m. Mar- 
garet Kennard; Ethel, d. Aug. 5, 1876; Stanley, m. 
Annabel Dixon. By his 2nd marriage he has, Stew- 
art Campbell, B, A. Harvard. 

iv Josiah, b. July 10, 1753, m. ab. 1780, Anna, dau. of Moses 
and Mary (English) Dewey, b. ab. 1755, and re- 
moved with his family to West Leyden, Lewis Co., 
N. Y. 

V Sarah, b. July 23, 1755, m. to Frederick Babcock. 

vi Ezekiel, b. Apr. 11, 1758, d. Sept. 1, 1759. 

vii Elizabeth Seaborn Wolfe, b. May 21, 1760, on the ship 
Wolfe, on the passage to Nova Scotia, m. March 2, 
1778, to Abraham, 3rd, son of Abraham, 2nd and 
Sarah (Knowlton) Masters, b. Dec, 26, 1755. He d. 
May 25, 1846, she d. Aug. 9, 1851. They had 13 
children. See the Masters Family, 

viii Richard, b. Feb. 8, 1763, in Cornwallis, m, Oct. 9, 1783, 
Tamar, dau. of John and Phebe Porter, and d. Sept. 
1, 1796. She d. in 1802. They had 4 children. 

ix Ezekiel, b. Jan. 2, 1766, m. Lydia Hayes, and d. Jan. 31, 
1812. 



878 KING'S COUNTY 

X Eleazer, b. Nov. 3, 1768, m. Sept. 8, 1790, Mary Chute, 
and had 11 children. See Chute Genealogies. 

Johii2 Woodworth (Silas^), b. Feb. 17, 1749, m. Feb, 9, 1769, 
Submit, dau. of Benjamin and Hannah Newcomb, and d. May 29, 
1816. She d. May 18, 1821, in her 70th year. Children : 

i Johannah, b. Sept. 11, 1769. 

ii Ira, b. Feb. 7, 1771. 

iii Abner, b. Jan. 19, 1773. 

iv Sarah, b. Oct. 28, 1774. 

V Alice, b. Aug. 9, 1776. 

vi John, b. April 8, 1779, m. Nov. 14, 1809, Margaret, dau. 
of Alexander and Elizabeth (Candlish) Bowles, and 
d. Nov. 1, 1827. Children: William, b. Oct. 13, 
1810, d. at Bridgetown, May 30, 1893 ; John Bowles, 
b. Sept. 15, 1812 ; and Elizabeth Candlish, b. Aug. 28, 
1814, m. to Hanson Chesley. Of these, John Bowles 
m. Mary Ann, dau. of Sheriff John M. Caldwell, and 
d. in March, 1859. His widow was m. (2) in 1863, as 
his 2nd wife to Jonathan Borden, M. D., who d. in 
Jan., 1875. One of the sons of John Bowles and Mary 
Ann (Caldwell) Woodworth is William Sommer- 
ville Woodworth, M. D., of Kentville, who graduated 
in medicine and surgery at Harvard in 1873, and 
later at the New York Polyclinic, and has had a 
long and successful medical practice in King's 
County. He m. (1) in 1890, Minnie Walton, (2) in 
1895, Edith Irene, dau. of Charles Frederick and 
Eliza Jane (Elder) Eaton, and has children: Ruth 
Edwina, and Eric Elder, Woodworth. His brothers 
and sisters were: Margaret Ann, Thomas Caldwell; 
John Candlish; Sarah Adelia; and Alexander 
Bowles ; Maria A. ; Agnes ; and Mary, all four of 
whom d. young. See the Chute Genealogies. The 
children of John and Submit Woodworth, after 
John, were: Benjamin, b. Feb. 2, 1781; 
Ellas, b. Sept. 7, 1782; Betty, b. Sept. 25, 
1784; James, b. Aug. 5, 1786; Andrew, b. Oct. 6, 
1788; Solomon, b. Dec. 16, 1793; m. Apr. 26, 1847, 
Margaret Alice, dau. of Jonathan and Margaret 
(Cummings) Newcomb, b. Nov. 22, 1811, and had 
children: Edwin, b. Mar. 21, 1848, d. May 7, 1857; 
John Elihu (Editor), b. May 10, 1849, m. Nov. 17, 
1898, Aimee, dau. of Eichard Huntington, of Yar- 



Fx\MlLY SKETCHES 879 

mouth, and lives at Berwick; Mary Clarissa; Sarah 
Sommerville. The last children of John and Sub- 
mit Woodworth were: Submit, b. Jan. 4, 179(5, m. to 
Thomas Magee; Rebecca. 

Thomasi Woodworth, b. in Norwich, July 7, 1826, m. (1) July 
19, 1750, Zerviah Fox, who d. in Cornwallis, June 3, 1767, aged 
41, (2) Jan. 26, 1769, Sarah Shaw, (3) Jan. 15, 1781, Mary, widow 
of Caleb Rand. Children: 

i Elizabeth, b. June 2, 1753, m. Nov. 23, 1775, to Stephen, 

son of David and Deborah (White) Eaton, 
ii Oliver, b. Jan. 19, 1756, m. (1) Apr. 25, 1782, Ruby, dau. 
of Peter and Elizabeth Pineo, (2) Sept. 7, 1819, 
Alice, dau. of Asael and Lucy Bentley. By his 1st 
wife Oliver had a son Nathan, who m. Feb, 24, 1807, 
Sarah, dau. of Dr. William and Ruth (Sheffield) 
Baxter, and had a son Benjamin Baxter, b. May 
15, 1812, who m. (1) Mar. 6, 1834, Eunice L. Pineo, 
(2) Ap^il 24, 1845, Prudence Pineo, (3) Mrs. Mahala 
(Kinsman) Fuller, widow of Bishop Fuller. By his 
1st wife, Benjamin Baxter had children: Maria, b. 
Jan. 19, 1835, m. to Ezekiel Harris; Joseph Edward, 
b. April 26, 1837, m. Nancy Cox; Eunice Eliza, b. 
Feb. 26, 1839, m. to Joseph Edwin Eaton; Douglas 
Benjamin, M. P. P., b. June 1, 1841, m. Feb. 28, 
1864, Elizabeth, dau. of Ezra Churchill, of Hants- 
port, and had 2 sons, the elder of whom is Dr. Percy 
Churchill Woodworth of Kentville. By his 2nd 
wife he had, George Whitfield, b. Feb. 14, 1846, m. 
(1) Mary E. dau. of Ezra Churchill, (2) Sarah, dau. 
of Daniel Allen; Sarah Rebecca, m. to James N. 
Wild; Mary Louisa, m. to James E. Henigar; Pru- 
dence, m. to Isaac B. Ells; Nathan Davenport. By 
his 3rd wife, Benjamin Baxter Woodworth had, 
EflSe Clare; Alice L. B. ; and Benjamin Baxter, Jr. 
Benjamin Baxter Woodworth was long one of the 
most important business men in the county. Of his 
sons, Douglas Benjamin Woodworth, barrister, Q. C, 
M, P., M. P. P., was a lawyer and politician of note, 
who from 1871 to 1878, was a member of the Local 
Legislature, and from 1882 to 1887, of the Dominion 
House. George Whitfield was long an editor in the 
county; Joseph Edward was an enterprising busi- 
ness man, first in Cornwallis, where he built some of 



880 KING'S COUNTY 

the largest vessels that have been built in the county, 
then in Manitoba, where he was foremost in several 
conspicuous business enterprises, and was at one 
time member of the Legislature. He d. in Georgia. 
U. S. A., in 1889. 

iii Huldah, b. Oct. 11, 1758, m. Oct. 25, 1781, to Timothy, son 
of David and Deborah (White) Eaton. 

iv Nathan, b. June 10, 1762, d. Feb. 8, 1784. 

V Levi, b. Feb. 11, 1767, m. (1) Feb. 27, 1794, Lydia, dau. of 
Asa and Sarah Clark. A son of Levi and Sarah 
(Clark) Woodworth was Levi Charles, b. June 26, 
1808, m. (1) June 4, 1834, Susanna, dau. of "William, 
Sr., and Nancy (DeWolf) Eaton, (2) Jan. 4, 1862, 
Mrs. Lydia A. (Bacon) Cogswell, widow of Rev. 
John Edmund Cogswell, (3) Mrs. Frances (Man- 
ning) Longley, widow of Israel Longley, of Anna- 
polis county, and mother of Hon. Judge J. Wilber- 
force Longley, long Attorney General of Nova 
Scotia, now on the Supreme Bench. By his 1st mar- 
riage Levi Charles Wooworth had children: Charles 
William; Abram Spurr; Anna S. ; Julia J., wife of 
A. L. Wood of Halifax; Elizabeth J.; Mira S., wife 
of Professor John Freeman Tufts, of Acadia Univer- 
sity. By his 2nd marriage he had one son, Charles 
Levi. The 2nd wife of Levi Charles Woodworth d. 
June 28, 1869. 

Amasa^ Woodworth, b. in Lebanon, Conn., Apr. 4, 1727, m. Sarah 
, and had a son Israel, who d. in Cornwallis, June 8, 1761, aged 



18 mos. Amasa probably returned to New England. 

William! Woodworth, b. in Norwich, Conn., Oct. 3, 1732, m. 

Sarah , and had children: Betty, b. in Lebanon, Conn., Sept. 

13, 1753, m. May 14, 1772, to James Smith, Jr., of Newport, R. I. ; 
William, b. in Hebron, Conn., Aug. 3, 1755, m. Jan. 8, 1778, Mary, 
dau. of Peter and Elizabeth Pineo; Timothy, b. in Lebanon, Aug. 
7, 1758; Alexander, b. in Cornwallis, July 19, 1760; Leonard, b. 
Feb. 4, 1763 ; Branch, b. Mar. 25, 1765 ; Lemuel, b. Feb. 2, 1767. 

A Nathan Woodworth, son of Oliver and Ruby Woodworth, m. 
in Cornwallis, Feb. 24, 1807, Sarah, dau. of William and Ruth 
Baxter. 



FAMILY SKETCHES 881 

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES 

Since the foregoing sketches were printed it has been discovered 
that Robert Avery, the Horton grantee, was a son of Rev. John 
Avery, of Truro, Mass., and his wife, Ruth (Little), and so was a 
younger brother of the father of Capt. Samuel Avery, founder of 
the Avery family of Horton that we have traced in this book. 
Robert Avery was b. in Truro, Mass., May 26, 1719, removed to 
Lebanon, Conn., and m. there Anna Cushman, dau. of Josiah and 
Anna Cushman. They had children: Robert, Jr., b. Nov. 25, 1742; 
John, b. Jan. 29, 1744-5; Anna, b. June 25, 1747, m. in 1766, in 
Horton, to George Haliburton; Josiah, b. Aug. 15, 1749; Susanna, 
b. Oct. 15, 1751; Sarah, b. Oct. 25, 1753; Ruth, b. Mar. 6, 1756; 
James, b. probably in Boston, Nov. 29, 1758. It is probable that 
Robert Avery was killed at the beginning of the Revolutionary 
War. In June, 1775, near Machias, Maine, a sloop from the Bay 
of Fundy, bound for some New England port, was seized by a 
British Tender and robbed of most of her rigging and all her pro- 
visions. On this sloop was "Mr. Robert Avery of Norwich in 
Connecticut," whom the officers of the Tender also took on board. 
The King's vessel was pursued by a company of Machias people 
favourable to the Revolution, and fired upon, and a fierce battle 
ensued. In the fight poor Mr. Avery, and a marine were killed, 
and the captain received a wound in the breast from which he died 
the next morning. The King's Tender was obliged to yield. See 
an article on ** Machias in the Revolution," by Rev. Charles H. 
Pope, in Vol. VI. Second Series, of the Collections and Proceedings 
of the Maine Historical Society. It is probable that Robert Avery 
settled in Horton for a while but went back to Connecticut and 
when he died (if the Robert Avery killed near Machias was he) 
was a resident of Norwich. 



Since the sketch, in its proper place, was printed, of 
the Clarke or Clark family the following facts have be- 
come clear. The Hon. Capt. Daniel Clarke, the first New England 



882 KING'S COUNTY 

Ancestor of the Connecticut Clarke family from which the King's 
County family sprang, came, it is said, from Chester, England, to 
Windsor, Conn,, aged about 14 or 16, with his uncle, the Rev. 
Ephraim Huet. He m, (1) in Windsor, June 15, 1644, Mary, dau. 
of Thomas Newberry, who d. Aug. 29, 1688, (2) Mrs. Martha (Pit- 
kin) Wolcott, who d. Oct. 13, 1719, aged 80. He d. Aug. 12, 1710, 
in the 88th year of his age, "or thereabouts." He was Secretary 
of the Colony of Connecticut from 1658 to 1666, inclusive; was 
several years a Magistrate ; was one of the Court of Magistrates or 
Assistants; and was Captain of a Cavalry troop in 1664. He was 
often employed as an Attorney, though he was not educated as a 
lawyer. See "Clarke or Clark Notes," in Professor and Mrs. E. E. 
Salisbury's "Family Histories and Genealogies," Vol. III. For 
Hon. Daniel Clarke's children see "Goodwin's Genealogical Notes," 
p. 23. He had: Mary; Josiah; Elizabeth; Daniel, Jr., b, Apr. 5, 
1654; John; Mary; Samuel; Sarah; Hannah; Nathaniel, all by his 
1st wife. 

DanieP Clarke, Jr. (Hon. Daniel^), b. Apr. 4th or 5th, 1654, m. 
in 1678, Hannah Pratt, dau. of Daniel and Hannah Pratt of Hart- 
ford, Conn., b. in Hartford. He was b. in Windsor, Conn., for a 
time lived in Hartford, but about 1710 removed to Colchester, 
Conn., See Stiles' "Ancient Windsor," "Goodwin's Genealogical 
Notes," and the "Marsh Genealogy." His children according to 
Goodwin's Notes and the Pratt Genealogy, were: Daniel, 3rd, b. 
in 1679; Moses, b. in 1638; John, b. in 1685; Aaron, bap. Nov. 13, 
1687; Nathaniel, bap. Mar. 26, 1693; Abraham, bap. Nov. 10, 1695; 
Noah, bap. Apr. 25, 1697. All these baptisms were at Hartford. 

Noah3 Claxk or Clarke (DanieP, Jr., Hon. Daniel^), bap, at Hart- 
ford, Apr. 25, 1697, was brought up in Colchester, Conn. He m, in 
Colchester, June 10, 1719, Sarah Taintor, dau. of Michael and Mabel 
(Olmsted) Taintor, b. Nov. 19, 1698. He d. June 1, 1749, aged 
52. For the Taintor or Tainter family see N. E. Hist, and Gen. 
Register, Vol. 3, pp. 153-156. Its founder in New England was 
Michael Taintor, who came from Wales and was master of a vessel 



FAMILY SKETCHES 883 

trading to Virginia. Administration on the estate of Noah Clark 
was granted to his widow, Sarah, July 4, 1749, and May 7, 1750, 
she was appointed guardian to her son Asa. The births of seven 
of the children of Noah and Sarah Clark are recorded in Colchester : 
Sarah; Sarah; Noah, Jr., Jerusha; Ezra; Elihu; Esther. The birth 
of Asa does not seem to be recorded, but the date of it was possibly 
about 1731. N. E. Hist, and Gen. Kegister, Vol. 42, p. 158. 

Asa^Clark (Noah^, DanieP, Jr., Hon. Daniel^), b. in Colchester, 
Conn, possibly about 1731, m. in Colchester, Sarah, dau. Capt. John 
and Lydia (Kellogg) Hopson, b. Jan. 29, 1737. Capt. John Hop- 
son's will, made July 19, 1751, proved the same year, mentions only 
his wife Lydia and his son John, but states that he has several 
daughters. His estate was divided among his wife, his son John, 
and his daughters, Elizabeth Johnson, Sarah, wife of Asa Clark, 
Lydia, Mary, Hannah, and Prudence, all unmarried. Mrs. John 
Hopson was m. (2) as his 2nd wife, to Henry Bliss of Lebanon, 
Conn., uncle of Nathaniel Bliss of Cornwallis, great-uncle of Irene 
(Bliss) wife of Elisha Eaton of Cornwallis, and gt.-gt.-uncle of Mrs. 
Ward Eaton of Cornwallis. N. E. Hist, and Gen. Hegister, Vol. 42, 
pp. 387, 388. Asa Clark or Clarke was the founder of the King's 
County Clarke family. 



John Webster, fifth governor of the Colony of Connecticut, 
the earliest New England ancestor of the Webster families of 
King's County, was born in England about 1500. He was one of 
the principal settlers of Hartford Conn, in 1836, a Magistrate from 
1639 to 1655, Deputy Governor in 1655, and Governor in 1856. He 
died at Hadley, Mass., Apr. 5, 1661. See "Connecticut as a Colony 
and as a State, ' ' Vol. 4, and Dr. Brechin 's Notes. 



INDEX 



Aboiteaux. 188 

Acacia Villa School, 345 

Acadia College, founded as Queen's, 

353; early graduates of, 353-8 
Acadia Seminary, 359 
Acadian Recmder, 192 
Acadians, from the west coast of 

France, 26; assist planters, 54, 185; 

dvke building of, 186; expulsion of, 

51, 54, 112; oath demanded of, 50; 

oaths taken by, 48, 49, 186; in Ayles- 

ford, 92, 109; removed to Halifax, 429 
Adams, Charles Francis, 161 
Addison, Mr. 264 
Agents sent to Nova Scotia, 62 
Agricola, Letters of, 192 
Agricultural implements, 190, 227 
Agricultural products, 193, 194 
Agricultural Society, 191, 192 
Aikin Prize, 431 
Alden, John, 21 
Alder, Eev. Robert, 326 
Aldershot Camp Grounds 33, 439 
Algonquins, 16 
Alienation of Grants, 84 
Alline, Eev. Henry, 251, 280-293, 308, 

309, 323 
Allison Family, 542-6 
Allison, Amelia, 133 
Allison, John, 327 
Allison, Joseph, 455 
Allison, Nancy, 135 
Allison, Samuel Leonard, 521 
Amusements, 221, 230, 231 
Angus Family, 546-7 
Annapolis Basin, 11 
Annapolis, History of 91 
Annapolis Royal, 1 
Anwell, Rev. William, 240 
Apples, markets for, 196; varieties of, 

204; yield of, 196 
Apthorp & Co., 200 
Archibald, Rev. Dr. E. W., 301 
Archibald, Hon. S. G. W., 411 
Argal, Captain, 25 
Armstrong, Edward, 82 
Armstrong, Lieut.-Governor, visits Min- 
as, 42 



Armstrong, Rev. Dr. George, 136 

Assembly, created, 65; first representa- 
tives to, 164; in 1789, 410 

Assessors appointed, 162 

Attornies employed, 443 

Avery Family, 547-9, and supplemen- 
tary note. 

Avery, James Fillis, M. D., 461 

Avery, John, 117 

Avery, Rev. Richard, 267 

Avon River, 3 

Avonport, 28 

Axford, Rev. F. J. H., 254 

Aylesford Bog, 22, 36 

Aylesford, Earl of, 91 



Bale Chaleurs, 16 

Bailey, Rev. Jacob, 178, 243-5 

Bailey, Capt. Joseph, 428 

Baker Family, 549, 550 

Bancroft, Eev. Aaron, 324 

Bank established in Halifax, 451, 455 

Banks Family, 350 

Baptist beliefs, 303; churches formed, 

316; Education Society, 358 
Barclay Family, 102, 103. See also 

Webster Family. 
Barclay grant, 92 
Barclay, Col. Thomas, 410, 433 
Barnaby Family, 550-3 
Barnaby, Caroline, 135 
Barnaby, George Eaton, 461-2 
Barnaby, Timothy, 126 
Barnaby 's Mill, 197 
Barristers and Attornies, 174 
Barss Family, 553-4 
Barss, John Edmund, 398 
Barss, John William, 457, 462 
Barss, Joseph, 126, 146 
Barss, Thomas, 30 
Baxter Family, 554-5 
Baxter, Dr. William, 152, 158, 237, 410, 

463-464 
Baxter's Harbour, 158 
Bay of Fundy, 24 
Bayard Family, 103, 104 
Bayard, Lieut.-Col. John, 431 



886 



INDEX 



Bayard, Dr. Robert, 127, 131 

Bayard, Col Samuel Vetch, 99, 103, 104 

Bayard, Dr. William, 131, 398 

Beach Family, 555 

Beaus^jour, Fort, 1, 51 

Beckwith Family, 555-560 

Beckwith, John, Jr., 289 

Beckwith, Capt. Samuel, 162, 274 

Belcher Family, 560-562 

Belcher, Lieut. Benjamin, 144, 180, 246, 

247, 251-253, 269, 432, 433, 464-465 
Belcher, Clement Horton, 465 
Belcher, Hon. Jonathan, 2, 49, 63, 83, 

184, 241, 426 
Belcher, Mrs. William, 398 
Bellefleur apple, 195 
Benedict Family, 562-3 
Benjamin, Perez, 238 
Benjamin, S. P., 198 
Bennett, Rev. Joseph, 225, 241, 243, 334, 

447 
Bennett, Rev. William, 326 
Bentley Family, 563-4 
Bentley, David, 289 
Berwick, 155, 156 
Berwick Register, 406 
Best Family, 564-6 
Best, William, 83, 84, 250, 442 
Biard, Father, 24 
Biencourt, Monsieur, 24 
Bigelow Family, 566-8 
Bigelow, Abigail, 226 
Bigelow, Amasa, 317 
Bigelow, Benjamin, 199 
Bigelow, Ebenezer, 151, 152, 198, 199 
Bigelow, Isaac, 199, 226, 274 
Bill Family, 568-570 
Bill, Hon. Caleb R., 465 
Bill, Rev. Dr. Ingram E., 398, 465-6 
Bill, Mary and Samuel, 227 
Bill, Sybil, 225 
Bill, William Cogswell, 466 
Billtown, 158 
Binney, Jonathan, 3 
Birch Cove, 330 
Bishop Family, 570-4 
Bishop, Professor A. L., 398 
Bishop, Miss Blanche M., 398 
Bishop, Dr. John Leander, 361, 364-7, 

398, 466-7 
Bishop, Maria, 133 
Bishop, Samuel, 330 
Bishop, Col. Samuel H., 467 
Bishop, J. Spurgeon, 206 
Bishop, Peter, 306 
Bishop Pippin apple, 195 



Black, Andrew, 131 

Black, Martin Gay, 455 

Black, Rev. William, 135, 252, 322-325 

"Black Winter at French Cross," 109- 

114 
Blackadder, Edward, 377,378,398 
Blackmore Family, 574 
Blackmore, Branch, 226 
Blackmore, Ruth, 226 
Blanchard Family, 574-6 
Blanchard, Judge George A., 468 
Blake, Thomas, 257 
Bligh Family, 576-7 
Bligh, Asael Bill, 468-9 
Bligh, Dr. Harris Harding, 398 
Bliss Family, 577-8 
Bliss, Samuel, 213 
Blomidon, 148 

Blowers, Chief Justice, 348, 349, 450 
Bluenose potato, 192 
Board of Trade, 202, 203 
Bolles, Frank, 141, 149 
Bonaventure, Masson, 37, 40 
Boot Island, 31 
Borden Family, 579-582 
Borden, Bayard, 82 
Borden, David, 452 
Borden, Hon. Sir Frederick, 153, 414, 

439, and the Borden Family. 
Borden, Lieut. Harold L., 439, 440, 469- 

472 
Borden, Jonathan, M. D., 472 
Borden, Perry, 227 
Boundaries of King's County, 116 
Bourg, Alexander, 45 
"B. O. W. C," 363 
Bowlby Family, 582-3 
Bowles Family, 583 
"Boys of Grand Pr6 School", 363 
Bragg Family, 584 
Brechin Family, 584 
Brechin, Perez, M., 34. See Harrington 

Family. 
Brechin, Dr. William Pitt, 30, 33, 47, 

and Preface. 
Brenton Family, 104 
Brenton, William, 92, 97 
Brewster Family, 584-5 
Brewster Plains, 84 
Brewster, Samuel, 84 
Breynton, Rev. Dr. John, 240, 241 
Bridges built at Port Williams, 177 
Brine, Rev. Robert F., and Mrs., 132 
Brinley, Edward, 266 
Brinley, Gertrude Aleph, 266 
Brock, Rev. Dr. Isaac, 258 



INDEX 



887 



Brouillan, Governor, 39, 41, 178 

Brown FamUics, 586-590 

Brymer Family, 590 

Brymer, Hon. Alexander, 3 

Buckley, Albert Hall. See Avery and 

Brown Families. 
Bugeant, Amand, 27 
Bulkeley, Freke, 410 
Bulkelev, Hon. Eiehard, 2, 3, 348 
Burbank plum, 195, 196 
Burbidge FamUy, 590-3 
Burbidge, Arnold, 152 
Burbidge, Ellas, 152 
Burbidge, Judge George W., 472-3 
Burbidge, Col. John, 83, 84, 162, 195, 

196, 217, 246, 250, 269, 410, 442, 445, 

448, 473-6 
Burbidge pear, 195 
Burgess Family, 593-4 
Burgess, C. E., 199 
Burgess, Seth, 289 
Burial places, 82 
Burke, Rt. Rev. Bishop, 321 
Burt, Rev. William, 326 
Bushell, John, 405 
Bushell, Mrs. Nancy (White), 226 
Bjrrne Family, 594 

CaldweU Family, 594-5 

Calkin Family, 595-8 

Calkin, Benjamin, 126 

Calkin, George E., 202, 598 

Calkin, Dr. John Burgess, 227-233, 300, 

302, 339, 342-345, and the Calkin 

Family. 
Campbell Family, 598 
Campbell, Sir Colin, 269, 430 
Campbell, Duncan, 337 
Campbell, Rev. John Moore, 254, 256 
Campbell, Miss Mary, 135 
Campbell, Lord William, 273 
Campbell, William, 119, 261 
Canada Creek, 84 
Canada, Major William, 84 
Candle making, 228, 229 
Canning, 28, 151-154 
Cape Breton, 1, 26 
Cape Split, 1, 11, 12, 22 
Caribou Bog, 7 
Carleton, Governor, 450 
Carman, Bliss, 362-3; poems of, 384-391 
Carr, Mary, 133 
Carroll, John, 141, 143 
Casgrain, Abb6, 37 
Cattle driven to market, 202 



Caulkins, Miss Frances M., 61, 212, 341 

Central Valley R. R., 183 

Champlain, 24 

Chandler, Hon. John, 104 

Channing, Dr. Edward, 50 

Chapin, Rev. Asahel, 350 

Charlemagne, Abb^, 21 

Charlton, Mrs, Lillian Ellis, 362j poem 

of, 381-382 
Charnisay, M. d'Aulnay, 25, 26 
Chase FamUy, 598-600 
Chase, Joseph, 225 
Chase, Stephen, 225, 226 
Chavreulx, Abb6, 37 
Chebogue Church, 289, 290 
Cheever, Rev. Israel, 271 
Chesapeake, 144 
Chipman Family, 600-4 
Chipman, Rev. Alfred, and wife, 399 
Chipman, Charles, 131, 137 
Chipman, George, 123, 127 135, 164 
Chipman, Handley, 126, 225, 272, 274> 

275, 405, 446 
Chipman, Mrs. Handley, 446, 447 
Chipman, Henry, M. D., 182, 189, 197 
Chipman, Professor, Isaac, 476-7 

Chipman, Judge Jared I., 452, 477 

Chipman, John, 289 

Chipman, Judge John Pryor, 143, 457 

Chipman, Cel. Leverett de Veber, 143,, 
209, 413, and the Chipman Family. 

Chipman, Mary Miller, 135 

Chipman, Ross, 32 

Chipman, Hon. Samuel, 32, 34, 84, 127,, 
132, 238, 477-8 

Chipman, Rev. Thomas Handley, 478-9 

Chipman, Rev. William, 452, 479 

Chipman, William Allen, M.P.P., 237, 
330, 411, 442, 479 

Chipman William Henry, M. P., 413, 
479-480 

Chipman, Winckworth, 133 

Chipman, Zachariah, 480 

Christ Chvrch, Morden, 156 » 

Christmas cooking, 230, 231 

Church, attendance at, 219, 220 

Church, Col. Benjamin, 40 

Clarke or Clark Family, 604-6, and sup- 
plementary sketch. 

Clark, Ephraim, 238 

Clark, George, 136 

Clark, John, 3, 455 

Clarke, John Hopson, 151, 153 

Clark, Moses, 444 

Clarke, Rev. John S , 254, 256 



888 



INDEX 



Clergymen reared in King's County. 
320, 321 o J, 

Cleveland Family, 606-608 
Cleveland, Lemuel, Jr., 104 
Cobequid, 4 

Cochran Family, 608 

€ochran, Charles P., 457 
Cochran, Hon. Thomas, 3, 450 

€ock, Eev. Daniel, 272 

Cofan Family, 608-9 

Cogswell Family, 609-612 

Cogswell, Alfred Chipman, 480-1 

Cogswell, Edmund J., 31 

Cogswell, Ezra, 226 

Cogswell, Hon. Henry H., 455, 481-2 

Cogswell, Hezekiah, 274, 289 

Cogswell, Miss Isabella B., 482-3 

Cogswell, the Misses, 135 

Cogswell, Eev. William, 483-4 

Colchester County, 4 

Coldwell Family, 612-3 

Coldwell, Prof. Albert E., 399 

Coldwell, Eliphalet, 158 

Coleman Family, 614-5 

Collectors of Customs, 170-172 

Colleges, sectarian, 412; small, 350? 
students at, 345-7 

Collier, John, 2, 63 

Commissioners for taking bail, 173 

Common Pleas, courts of, 161 

Comstock Family, 615 

Cone Family, 615-6 

Confederation of the Provinces, 413 

Confession of Messrs. J. L. and S S 
443-4 ■' 

Congdon Family, 616-7 

Congdon, Benjamin and Enoch, 155 

Congdon, James, 225 

Congdon 's Corner, 155 
Congregationalist Church in Cornwallis. 
779 ' 

Congregationalist Churches in Nova 

Scotia, 271 
Connors, Charles, 199 
Cooper, Eev. Samuel, 275 
Copp Family, 617 
Cornwallis, Governor, 50 
Cornwallis Town Book, 442 
Coroners, 173 

Cottnam, Ensign Samuel, 43 
Council, Executive, 2, 3, 176 
Council of Twelve, 411, 413: charged 

with disloyalty, 430 
County Councillors, 163, 164 
Courts, 159, 160, 176, 231 
Cox Family, 617-620 



Cox, Eev. Jacob W., 779 

Cramp, Eev. Dr. John M., 399, 484 

Cranberries, 194, 206 

Crane Family, 620-2 

Crane, Chloe, 120, 328 

Crane, Col. Jonathan, 225, 326, 327, 410 

436, 452, 484-5 ' 

Crane, Mrs. Jonathan, 327 
Crane, Silas H., 119 
Crawley, Eev. Dr. Edmund A., 136, 352. 

353, 485-7 ' > ^, 

Cromwell, Oliver, 25 
Croscombe, Eev. William, 326 
Crowne, William, 25 
Cucumbers raised, 194 
Cumberland County, 4, 430 
Cumberland Marsh, 12 
Cunard, Sir Samuel, 455 
Currie's Corner, 155 
Curry Family, 622 
Curry, Jacob, 198 
Custos' Eotulorum, 161, 167 

Daguerreotypes, 223 

Dalhousie College, founded, 350-353 

Dalhousie, Earl of, 192, 350, 411, 435 

Dancing in Connecticut, 221 

Darrow Family, 622 

Darrow, Jonathan, 123 

Dartmouth, Earl of, 429 

Davidson Family, 623-4 

Davidson, Eev. Prof. H. S., 399 

Davidson, Leslie L., 399 

Davidson place, 127 

Dawson, Sir William, 7 

DeBlois Family, 624-5 

de Blois, Eev. Dr. Austen K., 399 

de Blois, Eev. Dr. Stephen W., 308, 487-8 

De la Goudali© Abbe, 37 

Delancey and Watts, 60 

De la Tour, Charles, 25 

De la Tour, Madame, 25 

DeMille, Professor James, books of, 363 

399, 488 
Denison Family, 626-8 
Denison, Andrew, 92 
Denison, Eliza, 133 
Denison, Gurdon, M. D., 489 
Denison, Herbert, 30, 126 
Denison house, 126 
Denison, James, 135 
Denison, Judge James A., 489 
Denison, Julia, 133 
Denison, Col. Eobert, 489-90 
Denison, Samuel, 126, 135 



INDEX 



889 



Denison, Col. Sherman, 330 

rtenominations, relative strength of , 460 

Penson, Henry Denny, 431 

D 'Entremont, Messieurs, 27 

Denys, Nicholas, 17 

Deputy Registrars, 169 

De Razilly, 25 

Deschamps, Judge Isaac, 3, 443, 450 

De St. Cosm(?, Monsieur, 37 

Dewey Family, 629 

DeWolf Fajnilies, 629-638 

DeWolf, Benjamin, 3 

DeWolf, Benjamin, M. P. P., 490-91 

DeWolf, Rev. Dr. Charles, 491 

DeWolf. Daniel, M. P. P.. 148, 491 

DeWolf, Edward, 148, 448 

DeWolf, Judge Elisha, 147, 148, 448, 

449, 492-3 
DeWolf, Elisha, Jr., 147, 148, 209 
DeWolfe house, 127, 131 
DeWolf, Israel, 148 
DeWolfe, James Edward, 123, 198 
DeWolf, James Ratchford, M. P. P., 493 
DeWolf, James Eatchford, M. D., 129, 

181, 493-4 
DeWolf, Joseph Brown, 148 
DeWolfe, Melville G., 141, 202 
DeWolf, Oliver, 148 
Dewolf, Robert Dickson, 148 
DeWolfe, Stephen Brown, 148, 225 
DeWolf, Hon. Thomas A. S., 148, 192, 

327, 494-5 
Dickie Family, 638-642 
Dickie, Hon. Charles, 152, 495 
Dickie, David M., 152, 495 
Dickie, Hugh Logan, 495-6 
Dickie, James Edward, 496-7 
Dickie, Hon. John B., 497 
Dickie's Mill, 197 
Dickson Family, 642-6 
Dickson, Charles, 90, 97, 410 
Digby Neck and Gut, 11 
Dimock, Shubael, 411 
"Disciples". Church, 321 
Dissatisfaction with grants, 84 
Distribution of lands, 90 
Diversions, 101 

Dixon, Rev. Richard F., 258, 259 
Dodge, Families, 646-7 
Dodge, Brenton H., M. P. P., 143 
Dodge, George 498 
Dodge, Dr. Stephen, 132 
Dodge, Hon. T. Lewis, 30, 498-9 
Donaldson, Benjamin, 151 
Donaldson, John, 197 
Drees, 212-218 



Dry Hollow, 33 

Dudley, Governor Joseph, 40, 41, 250 

Dudley, Hon. William, 249 

Dugan Family, 647 

Duke of Kent visits King's Co., 449 

Durand, Father Justinian, 37 

Dykes, Grand, Grand Pr('', Middle, 
Tobin, Union, Upper, Wellington, 
Wickwire, 187-189; injured, 41; 
French way of making, 186; made by 
N. E. planters, 187; repair of, urged, 
184 



Eagles Family, 647-8 

Earle, Mrs. Alice Morse, 217, 236 

East Falmouth, 3 

Eaton Family, 648-655. See also Chip- 
man, DeWolf, Rand, Starr, and other 
families. 

Eaton, Prof. Adoniram J., 400 

Eaton, Arthur Watson. See the Pre- 
face, and Eaton family. 

Eaton, Rev. Dr. Arthur Wentworth H.| 
400; poems of, 394-8 

Eaton, Dr. Brenton H., 400 

Eaton, Rev. Dr. Charles A., 400 

Eaton, Col. Daniel Lewis, 499-500 

Eaton, David, 82 

Eaton, Dr. Frank Herbert, 7, 143, 202, 
400, 500-1 

Eaton, George, 451 

Eaton, Mrs. J. Everett, 400 

Eaton, Ralph Samuel, 196, 203-6 

Eaton, Ward, 29, 501-2 

Eaton, William, 132, 143, 339, 457, 502 

Education Act, 337, 338 

Elder Family, 655-7 

Elder, Eev. Samuel, 136, 361; poem of, 
367-8; 400 

Elder, Prof. William, 400, See Elder 
family 

Elderkin Family, 658-9 

Elderkin Place, 131 

Elderkin, Silas, 30 

Elections, 164, 453 

Electrical Storm, 457 

Eliot, Rev. Dr. Andrew, 274, 275 • 

Elliott Family, 659 

Ellis, Rev. William, 243 

Ells Family, 659-661 

Ells, Dr. Robert W., 400 

Ells, Samuel, 227 

Emmerson, Stephen, 227 

English Family, 661-3 

Entertainments, 138, 139, 221 



890 



INDEX 



Evangeline, Longfellow's, 23, 360 
Executive Council, members from 
King's Co., 425 



Fair at Windsor, 448 
Falkland, Lord, 337 
Falmouth Township, 3 
Fanisworth Family, 663 
Farrell, Bernard, 133 
Faulkner, Eev. Dr. J. A., 400 
Felix, Father, 21 
Ferguson, John, 412 
Fillis, James, 123, 126 
Fires and fireplaces, 210, 229, 230 
Fishing, 199, 200 
Fitch Family, 663-5 
Fitch, James Eatchford, M. D., 503 
Fitch, Miss M. A., 400 
Fitch, Simon, M. D., 503-4 
Five Islands, 20, 115 
Flowers, 223 
'Food, 218, 219 

Forrester, Eev. Dr. Alexander, 339 
Forsyth Family, 665-6 
Forsyth, Eev. William, 298, 299 
Fort Edward, residents at, 241 
Fort Montague, 427 
Foster farm, 31 
Foster, Eev. G. I., 267 
Fowler, Capt. John, 105 
Fox Family, 666-8 
Fox, Cornelius 239, 270, 335 
Fox Hill road, 33 
Fox, John, 239 
Fox, Peter, 238 
Frame, Miss, 18 
Francklin, Manor, 3, 4 
Francklin, Hon. Michael, 430, 431 
Francklin, Mrs. Susanna, 348 
Franklin Stoves, 210 
Freemasonry, 237 
FreePrrss, 4C6 

Free Schools, 338, 339, 412, 413 
French bridges, 180 
French Cross, 46, 109, 177 
French Fort, 30 
Freneuse, Madame, 41 
Fruit growing, 196, 197, 203-206 
FuUer Family, 668-9 
Fuller, Amos, 62, 64 
Fuller, Eliphalet, 239 
Fuller, Patrick, 127 
FuUerton Family, 669 
Fundy, Bay of, 2, 8, 9; marshes of, 10; 
tides of, 9, 19, 115, 119 



Furlong, Eev. William, 310 
Furniture, 210-212 



Gannett, Eev, Caleb, 271 

Ganong, Prof. W. F., 85 

Gardens, 223 

Garrets, contents of, 209 

Garretson, Eev. Freeborn, 325 

Garrett's Mill, 197 

Gaspereau, 1, 28 

Gaul, Catharine, 135 

Gaulin, Abb<, 37 

Gerrish, Hon. Benjamin, 4, 250, 275 

Gerrish, Hon. Joseph, 2, 104 

Qesner Family, 670-671 

Gesner, Abram, M. D., 7, 400, 504 

Gesner, Col. Henry, 126 

Ghost Stories, 101 

Gibson Woods, 144 

Gifkins, Percy, 183 

Gillett FamUy, 671 

Gilmore, Eev. George, 296, 452 

Gilpin Family, 671-3 

Gilpin, Eev. Edwin, 266 

Glooscap, 19, 20 

Gold discovered, 456 

Gore Family, 673-4 

Gore, Moses, Jr., 226 

Gould, Esther, 135 

Graham Family, 674 

Graham, Eev. Hugh, 290, 294, 296-298 

Graham, Jonathan, 239 

Grammar Schools, 336 

Grand Dyke, 33 

Grand Habitant river, 1 

Grand Pre, 1, 23, 28, 29 ; Battle of, 46 

47; deputies from, 50 
Grand Pr6 Dyke, 141 
Granges, 193 

Grants, 65, 66, 72-74, 76-78, 84-86 
Granville Street church, Halifax, 351 
Grassie Family's land, 92 
Gravenstein apple, 196 
Graves Family, 674-5 
Gray, Joseph Gerrish, 83 
*' Great Awakening," 278-280 
Green, Hon. Benjamin, 2, 49, 63 
Grey, Earl, 269 
Griffin-j Amos, 30 



Halhead, Edward, 240 
Haliburton Family, 676-9 
Haliburton, George or William, 335, 340 
Haliburton, Maria, 184 



INDEX 



891 



Haliburton, Susanna (Otis), 68 

Haliburton, Hon. Judge Thomas C, 5, 
53, 67, 115, 134, -ill, and Haliburton 
Family. 

Haliburton, William, 68, 428 

Halifax, founding of, 47 

Halifax Gazette, 40.'S 

Halifax houses, furnishing of, 211, 212 

Halifax Journal, 406 

Hall Family, 679-680 

Hall, John Clarke, 343 

Hall, Samuel, 156 

Hall, William, 440 

Halliburton Family. See Inglis Family. 

Halliburton, Hon. Sir Brenton, 703-6 

Halliburton, Hon. Dr. John, 92, 97 

Hall's Harbour, 156, 157 

Hamilton Family, 680-2. See also 2nd 
Starr, Eaton, Harris, Thorne, Suther- 
land, and other families. 

Hamilton, Dr. Charles C, 192, 197 

Hamilton, Charles S., xvi 

Hamilton, Eev. Dr. D. S^tuart, 133, and 
second Starr Family 

Hamilton, John, and Lieut. John, 43 

Hamilton, Jonathan, 210 

Hamilton, the Misses, 133, 135 

Hamilton, Lt. Col. Otho, 43, 47 

Hamilton, Mrs. Phebe, 448 

Hamilton 's Corner, 29 

Hammond. Family, 682 

Hammond, Archelaus, 83, 84, 225 

Hammond, John Arnold, 84 

Hamond, Sir Andrew Snape, 270 

Hancock, Thomas, 60 

Handfield, Major, 47 

Hants County, 2, 3 

Harding Families, 683-5 

Harding, Abraham, 83, 196 

Harding, Lemuel, 83 

Harding, Kev. Theodore S., 135, 238, 
306-308, 313 

Harding, Thomas, 83 

Hardy Thomas, 132 

Harrington Family, 685-6 

Harrington, Edward Henry, 504-5 

Harrington, George, 127 

Harrington Stephen, 226 

Harrington, William, 127 

Harrington 's Mill, 197 

Harris Families, 686-692 

Harris, Albert, 32 

Harris, Charles W. H., and James, 192 

Harris, James Prentice, 127 

Harris, John, 92 

Harris, Jonathan, 62, 69 



Harris, Lebbeus, 410 

Harris, Thaddeus, 225, 317 

Harris, William, 126, 131, 199 

Harvev, Sir John, 269 

Hatt, Rev. Daniel E., 314 

Hay, yield of, 193 

Haycock, Prof. Ernest, 7 

Hea, Dr. Joseph R., 345 

Henry, Anthony, 405 

Herbin, John Frederic, 28, 29; poems of, 
372-375; 380, 400 

Higgins Family, 692-3 

Higgins, James Edgar, 401 

Higgins, Rev. Dr. Thomas A., 401 

Hill Family, 693 

Hill, Hon. Charles, 410 

Hill, Rev. Dr. George W., 211, 216 

Hill, Sheriff John Thomas, 448, 505-7 

Hillcrest Orchards, 196, 203 

Hilton Family, 693-4 

Hilton, Benjamin, 237, 328 

Holden, Rev. Philip M., 331-333 

Holland, Anthony Henry, 406 

Honeyman, Dr. 7 

Horseback Travelling, 180, 232 

Horse-racing, 222 

Horticultural School, 206 

Horticultural Society, 196 

Horton, boundaries of lots in, 448; 
church needed at, 241; church or- 
ganized at, 124, 305; courts held at^ 
160; glebe in, 255; marriages in, 305; 
mission at, 241; parish, 259; stock 
owned in, 448; vital records of, 442; 
on Wesleyan circuit, 255 

Horton Academy, 350, 359 

Horton Corner, 123 

Horton Town Plot, 123 

Hortonville, 28 

Household utensils, 227 

Houses, 207-209 

Hovey, Daniel, 441 

Howe, John, 406 

Howe, Hon. Joseph, 352, 380, 412, 414 

Hunt, Rev. Abram Spurr, 507-8 

Hunt, William, 127, 453 

Huntington Family, 694-5 

Huntington, Caleb, 274, 289 

Huston Family, 695-6 

Huston, John, 92, 289 

Imports to Nova Scotia, 202 
Incorporation of towns, 143 
Inglis FamOy, 697-713 
Inglis, Rev. Archibald P., 348, and 
Iglis family. 



892 



INDEX 



Inglis, Et. Eev. Charles, 100, 195, 265, 
375, 398, 399, and Inglis Family. 

Inglis, Et. Eev. John, 265, 351, and , 
Inglis Family. 

Innes, Peter, 127, 183, 202 

Inns between Windsor and Aylesford, 
129, 130 

Isadora, Pere, 57 

Isham, Professor, 207 

Jackson Family, 713 

Jackson and Alger's Geology, 7 

Jaw-Bone Corner, 158, 308 

Jess Family, 713 

Johnson Family, 714-5 

Johnstone Family, 715-8 

Johnstone, Hon. James William, 352, 

412, 413 
Johnstone, Lewis, M. D., 148, 508-9 
Jones, Eev. James, 330 
Jordan Family, 718-9 

Kavanagh, Lawrence, 330 

Keating, Eev. J. Lloyd, 258 

Kempt, Sir James, visits King's, 454 

Kempton Family, 719-720 

Kempton, Eev. Dr. S. B., 314 

Kent, Duke of, visits King's 124 

Kent Lodge, 148 

Kentville, chapel of ease at, 256; courts 
held at, 160; "District of St. James" 
at, 256, 257 • incorporated, 142; town 
officers of, signing address, 457; trot- 
ting park, 33 

Kidston Family, 720-2 

Kilcup, Harry, 182 

Killam's Mill, 197 

Kimball, Benjamin, 64, 69 

King, John Warren, 143 

King William IV, visits King's, 448 

King's College, Windsor, 348-350 

Kingsport, 154, 155 

Kinlock, Eev. Samuel, 294 

Kinsman Family, 722-3 

Kirk, David, 25 

Kirkpatrick, Samuel, 131, 132 

Ladies' Seminary opened, 456 
Laird Family, 723 
Laird, James, 46 
Laird, John, 509 
Lamps introduced, 230 
Land to be sold for taxes, 445 
Lands, distribution of, 78 
Landsey, Chloe, 144 
Laurier Administration, 414 



Lawrence Family, 723-4 

Lawrence, Col. Elisha, 91, 118, 119, 144 

Lawrence, Governor, 49, 50, 51, 184 

Lawson, William, 411 

Lawyer, first, in King's County, 454 

Lebanon, town of, 70, 71 

Le Blanc, Francois, 56 

Le Blanc, Joseph, 45 

Le Blanc, R^n6, 45, 243 

Legge, Governor, 177, 243, 429-431 

Legget, William N., 133, 134 

Legislative Council, members of, from 

King's, 425 
Leland, Charles G., 19 
Le Loutre, 45 
Le Maire, Abb6, 37 
Lescarbot, Marc, 17 
Letters in Halifax Post Office, 445 ''^ 
Light-house built, 456 
Lighting houses, 228 
Loan Act, 454 
Lockhart Family, 724-732 
Lockhart, Eev. Arthur J., 361; poems 

of, 368-372, 401 
Lockhart, Eev. Dr. Burton W., 362j 

poem of, 376-377 
Lockhart, Jacob, 117 
Lockwood Family, 732-3 
Lockwood, Edward, 151, 152 
Long Island, 28, 31, 189 
Longfellow Family, 733-4 
Longfellow, Jonathan, 83 
Longley, Avard, 197 
Longley, Hon. Judge J. W., 741 
Loomer Family, 734 
Loomer's Mill, 197 
Lord Family, 734-5 
Lord Stanley visits Kentville, 457 
Lothrop Family, 735 
Louisburg, 1, 27, 40; capture of, 42; 59 
Lovett Family, 735-6 
Lovett, Henry, 457 
Lovett, John, 427 
Lovett, Jonathan, 67 
Lovett, Margaret Ann, 135 
Lovett 's Block, 131 
Lowden Family, 736-8 
Loyalist Migration, 90, 106, 107, 449 
"Loyalists," Sabine's, 102 
Ludlow, Major, 450 
Lumber interests, 198 
Lunenburg County, 2, 3, 260 
Lyon, Eev. James, 294 
Lyons Family, 738-9 
Lyons, John, 29 
Lyons, Joseph E., 333 



INDEX 



893 



Magee Family, 739 

Magee, Henry, 123 

Maillard, Abbo, 329 

Maliseet Indians, 16, 17, 19 

Manning Family, 739-742 

Manning, Rev. Edward, 310-317, 341 

Manufactures, 203 

Marchant Family, 743 

Marchington, Philip, 450 

Margeson Family, 743-4 

Alargiierite, Whitiier's, 361 

Marriages and marriage licenses, 224, 

Martell, Rev. Charles H., 314 

Martin Family, 744 

Martin, Brotherton, 92 

Martin, Rev. John, 229 

Martin, Mary, 133; and Rachel, 134 

Mascarene, Lieut-Gov., 40, 46 

Masonic Hall, 127 

Masters Family, 744-7 

Masters, Charles, 126 

Masters, George, 131 

Masters, Robert S., 143, 457 

Masters, Dr. Vernon F., 401 

Mather Family, 747 

Mather, James, 84 

Mather's Church, Halifax, 271 

Matthews, William, 264 

Mauger, Joshua, 40, 200 

McClellan, Elizabeth, 213 

McColla, Lieut. John, 435 

McDonald, Andrew, 29 

McFall, Rev. Thomas, 301 

McKay, Rev. Alexander, 301 

McKittrick Family, 747-8 

McLoughlin, Matthew, 270, 335 

McMasters, Patrick, 238 

McMillan, Rev. G., 301 

Melanson, Pierre, 26, 27 

Mellor, Rev. T. C. 254 

Methodist Chapel, 135 

Micmac encampments, 145 

Middle Dyke, 34 

Migration to New Brunswick, 85 

Militia, 426-439 

Miller Family, 749 

Miller, John R., 132 

Milledge, Thomas, 410 

Minas, defences of, 426 

Minas Channel, 1 4* 

Minas Marine Ins. Co., 456 

Miner Family, 749-750 

Mines reserved, 84 Ji 

Minor, James, 444 "'•■' * 



Minor, Sylvanus, Jr., 444 

Mitchell Frederick, 127 

Moccasin Hollow, 47 

Mohican Indians, 16 

Moore Family, 137, 750-2 

Moore, Daniel C, 509-511 

Moore, Rachel Lane, 261 

Moore, Stephen H., 127 

Moore, Capt. Thomas W., 118, 260, 261 

Moore, Col. William C, 135, 164, 217, 

261 
Moireau, P^re Claude, 37 
Morden, James, 97, 98, 263, 264, 511-512 
Morden Village, 108, 156; church built 

at, 156 
Moreau, Rev. Jean Baptiste, 240 
Morecomb, Capt. Jonathan, 84 
Moriarty, Rev. John Bernard, 333 
Morris, Hon. Charles, 2, 3, 63 
Morrison, Alexander, 451 
Morton Family, 753-5 
Morton, Elkanah, 289, 341 
Morton, Elkanah, Jr., 274 
Morton, George Elkana, 513-5 
Morton, Irene Elder, 362; poem of, 

378-9, 401 
Morton, Rev. James F., 401 
Morton, Hon. John, 192, 515-6 
Morton, Lemuel, death of, 435 
Moser, John, 132 

Mott, Edward, 64 -• 

Moulton, Rev. Ebenezer, 304 
Mud Bridge, 22 ^ 

Mud Creek, 147 
Mulloney, Dr. John, 333 
Municipality of King's, 4, 163 
Murdoch Family, 755-6 
Murdoch, Beamish, 295, 410 
Murdoch, Rev. James, 268, 294-296, 443 
Murdoch, Mrs. James 295 
Murray, Rev. William, 300 
Musgrave Family, 756 

Nantucket, History of, 62 
Narragansett Indians, 16 
"National Policy," 413 
Naval Officer, 173 
Negroes in King's County, 144 
Neily Family, 756 
Nesbitt, Attorney General, 443 
Newcomb Family, 757-762 
Newcomb, Jerusha, 225 
Newcomb, John, 274 
Newcomb, Professor Simon, 401. 402, 
516 



894 



INDEX 



Nevr England, invasion from, feared, 
431; rebels from, come to Cornwallis, 
432 

New Light Church, 265, 285, 286, 290, 
291 317 

New Light Churches in N. S., 252 

New Minas, 28, 30, 31 

Newport Township, 3 

Newspapers, 405-9 

Newton, Henry, 3 

Nicholson, General Francis, 42 

Noble, Lieut. Col. Arthur, 46 

Nocout, Bartholemew, 442 

Norris, Mrs. Lydia, 253 

Norris, Miss Mary Ann, 405 

Norris, Eev. Robert, 253-255^ 516-7 

North Family, 763-4 

North, John, 237 

North, John B., 198 

North Mountain, 1 

Northup, Charles E., 152 

Northup, John, 199 

Northup, Joseph, 152 

Norton, Eev. Jacob B., 318 

Norwich, Conn., school, 341 

Nova Scotia Chronicle 405 

Oak Grove Cemetery, 145, 146 

Oak Island, 31 •" ^ 

Obituaries, modern, 446 

Old Dyke, 148 

Orange Eangers, 431, 432 

Orchards, extent of, 194-196 

Orpin Family, 764-7 

Orpin, John E., 108, 180 

Osborn Family, 767 

Otis, Dr. Ephraim, 68 

Otis, Judge Joseph, 62, 69 

Owen, Rev. Henry L., 266 

Packets between Falmouth and New 

York, 184 
Pain, Father Felix, 37 
Palmer Family, 768 
Palmeter, John, 151 
Parades, 79, 277 
Parish Family, 769 
Parker Family, 769-771 
Parker, Deacon Abel, 155 
Parker, Eev. David O., 156, 402 
Parlee, Eev. Henry T., 267 
Parr, Governor, 117, 260, 264, 348 
Parrsborough, 4, 20, 91, 115, 117-120, 

122, 260-262 
Partridge Island, 22 



Passamaquoddy Indians, 16, 17 

Patterson Family, 771-3 

Patterson, Arthur McNutt, and A. H., 

345 
Payzant, Eev. John, 309-311 
Peace, Clerks of, 161, 167 
Peace of Eyswick, 25 
Peck Family, 774-5 
Peck, Benjamin, 126, 145 
Peck, Cyrus, 126 
Peck, Mary, 146 
Penacook Indians, 16 
Penobscot Indians 16, 17 
People's Bank, 457 
Pequot Indians, 16 
Pereau, 28; river, 1 

Perkins, Eli, 125 

Petit Habitant river, 1 

Phelps Family, 776 

Phelps, Eev. Benaiah, 268, 271-4, 276, 
278, 447 

Phillips, Governor, 32 

Phipps, Sir William, 25 

Physicians, 174, 175 

Picnics, 139 

Pidgeon, Eev. George, 706-7 

Pierce, Joseph, 123 

Fierson Family, 776-7 

Pierson, Eev. Nicholas, 305 

Pine Woods, 19, 144, 276, 278 

Pineo Family, 777-9 

Pineo, Albert J,. 402 

Pineo, Edward, 152 

Pineo, Erastus, George, John O., 151 

Pineo, George D., 151, 238 

Pineo, Eev. John, 317, 318 

Pineo, Peter, 239 

Pineo, Peter, M. D., 517-8 

Pingree Family, 780 

Piziquid, 28 ; river, 2, 3 

Planters, early homes of, 87-89; sail 
from New England, 67 

Poor, support of, 162 

Poor-houses, 162, 163 - 

Population at different periods, 458-9 

Port Williams, 28, 68, 158; bridges 
built at, 177 

Porter Family, 780-2 

Porter, Abigail, Elisha, Miriam, Samuel, 
225, 226 

Porter, John, 289 

Porter, Eev. Nehemiah, 271, 275 

Post Family, 782 

Post Offices established, 456 

Postage, 449, 455 

Postmasters, 172, 173 



INDEX 



895 



Potatoes, disease of, 152; high prices 
brought by, 456; yield of, 193 

Potter Pamiiy, 782-3 

Potter, Henry, 97 

Poutriuoourt, Mona., 24 

Powdered hair, 216 

Powell, Pinah, 144 

Povnton Brereton, 85 

Pratt, Ethan, 226 

Prayer Book worship, 241 

Presbyterian Church, 277, 294, 296, 297, 
300-302 

Presbyterianism in Western N. S., 179 

Presbytery formed, 296, 297 

Prescott Family, 783-5 

Preseott, Hon. Charles E., 196, 204, 209, 
253, 451, 454, 518-9 

Preseott, Dr. Jonathan, 258 

Products of the county, 201 

Prothonotaries, 169 

Pryor Family, 786-7 

Pryor, Eev. Dr. John, 520-1 

Pryor, William, 455 

Pubnico, 26, 27 

Pudsey Family, 787 

Pudsey, Hugh, 195 

Punishments, 219, 455 

Pyke Family, 788-9 

Pyke, John George, 337, 410 

Quebec, 1 
Queen's County, 2 

Eailway incorporated, 182 

Eameau de St. Pere, 26 

Sand Family, 789-793 

Band, Dr. Benjamin, 153, 187, 188, 402. 

See also preface. 
Eand, Caleb H., 137, 209, 521-2 
Band, Ebenezer, 522 
Eand, Dr. Henry W., 403, 522-3 
Eand, Eev, Dr. Silas T., 21, 363, 403, 

523-4 
Eand, Dr. Theodore H., 336; poems of, 

391-394; 525 
Eand, Mrs. Theodore H., 402 
Eandall Family, 793-5 
RatcMord Family, 795-6 
Eatchford, James, 117, 118, 120 
Eathbun Family, 796-7 
Eathbun, Joseph, 198 
Eaynal, Abb^, 48 
"Eazilly's 300," 26 
Eead, Eev. Eliphalet A., 403 
Eead, Eev. Joseph, 306 
Eectory built in Cornwallis, 247, 248 



Redden Family, 797-8 

Eedden, Robert, 30 

Redden, William, 123, 126, 526 

Eeed, Miss Helen Leah, 403 and Beid 

family 
Eeed, Melbourne, 403 
Reid FamUy, 798-802 
Eeid, Duncan, 85 
Eeid, Isaac, 29 
Eeid, Robie L., K. C, 80, 84, and Eeid 

Family 
Eepresentation fixed, 65 
Eepresentatives fr» i King's Co., 414- 

424 
Eesponsible government, struggle for, 

411, 412 
Eevivals in Cornwallis, 221, 278 
Eevolution, officers and soldiers of, 100; 

sympathy with, feared, 429, 430, 432 
Ehodes, William, 100 
Eibston Pippin anple, 196 
Eichard, Edouard, 49 
Eichardson, Eev. Samuel, 136 
Eichey, Eev. Dr. Matthew, 325, 327 
Eichey, Eev. Theophilus S., 258, 526-7 
Eimbaut, Franrois, 27 
Eitchie Grant, 92 
Eiviere aux Canards, 1, 28, 29 
Eiviere House, 126 
Eoad to Port Eoyal, 176 
Eoberts, Charles G. D., 362, 363 • poems 

of, 382-384 
Eobie, Hon. S. B., 411 
Eobinson, John 273 
Eobinson's Corner, 28 
Rockwell Family, 802-5 
Eockwell, Sheriff Charles F., 143 
Rogers Family, 805-6 
Roman Catholic Missions, 246; priests, 

331 
Eoman Catholics, disabilities of, 329 
Eomans, Eev. Alexander, 132 
Roscoe Family, 806-9 
Eoscoe, Colin W., 390 
Eoscoe, Lt. Col. Wentworth E , xvi, 

143, 209 
Euggles, Eev. John Owen, 258, 527-8 
Euggles, General Timothv, 99 
Eyan, James W., 141, 143, 439, 440, 457 
Eyan, Martin W., 333 
Eyan, Major Eobert H., 439, 440 
Eyarson, Francis, 99 
Eye, yield of, 193 

Sackville, college at, 412 
Salter, Malachy, 275, 295 



896 



INDEX 



Sanford Family, 809-812 

Saul, Thomas, 2 

Saunders Family, 812-813 

Saunders, Eev. Dr. E. M., 99, 100, 179, 
304, 403, 404 

Saunders, Miss M. Marshall, 404 

Savary, Hon. Judge A. W., 49, and all 
references to the History of Annapo- 
lis. 

Sawyer Family, 813 

Sawyer, Rev. Dr. A. W., 357 

Sawyer, President, Everett W., 357, 404 

Saxby gale and tide, 189, 457 

Scaummell, Eev. Edward, 258 

Schofield Family, 813-4 

School houses, 336, 337 

School lands, 268-270 

School library in Kentville, 347 

Schools, inspectors of, 339, 340 

Schooh, Madras, 336, 337 

Schools, S. P. G., established, 334, 5 

Scotch emigrants, 157 

Scots Bay, 157, 158 

Scott, Rev. Jonathan, 289 

Seaman Family, 814-5 

Seaman, Edward, 30 

Sears, F. C, 197 

Secombe, Rev. John, 275 

Sects, small, 321 

Sessions, court of, 161, 452 

Shade trees, 223 

Shannon Family, 120, 121 

Shannon, James Noble, 120, 326 

Shannon. Mrs. James Noble, 328 

Sharp Family, 815-6 

Shaw Family, 816-7 

Shaw, Eev. Dr. Avery A., 404 

Sheepskin Court, 164 

Sheffield Family, 818 

Sheffield, Capt., 432 

Sheffield, John, 151 

Sheffield and Wells, 152 

Sheffield and Wickwire, 153 

Sheffield's Mill, 188 197 

Shelburne County, 2 

Sheriffs, 165-167 

Sherman Family, 819 

Sherman, Jonathan, 84, 322, 323 

Shipbuilding, 198, 199 

Shirley, Governor 46, 51 

Shop licenses granted, 455, 456 

Shreve Family, 819-821 

Shreve, Eev. Thomas, 117, 259-261 

Shreve, Eev. Dr. Eichmond, 254, 256, 
259 



Siraonds, Rev. James, 267 " - ' 

Skinner Family, 821-2 

Slaves, 233-237 

Smallpox epidemic, 447 

Smith, Charles, 127 

Smith, Rev. David, 272 

Smith, John, 237 

Smith, Rev. T. Watson, 323 

Smith, Yernon, 183 

Smith, William, 227 

Social centres, 138 

Sommerville, Rev. Dr. Robert, 340 

Sommerville, Rev. William, 299, 301, 

528-9, 779 
South African War, 439, 440 
Spencer's Island, 199 
S. P. G. missionaries, 240 
Spinney Family, 822-3 
Spinning, 227, 228 
Sprague, Junia D., 133 
St. Anne de Beaupr^, 38 
St Andrew's Lodge, 239 
St. Charles Church, 38 
St. George, Miss, 135 
St. George's Church, Parrsborough, 261 
St. George's Lodge, 237-239 
St. James Church, 137, 141, 259 
St. James Rectory, 259 
St. John's Church, Corwallis, 137, 247, 

248 
St. John's Parish, Horton, 255 
St. John's Lodge, 239 
St. Joseph's Church, 137, 331, 332 
St. Mary's Church, Aylesford, 263, 264 
St. Paul's Church, Halifax, 240, 241; 

secession from, 351 
St. Paul 's Presbyterian Church, 138 
St. Stephen, Sir Charles, 25 
Stage line established, 130; stage 

travelling, 180, 181 
Stairs Family, 823 
Stairs, Hon. William J., 339 
Starr Families, 823-832 
Starr, Anne Bushnell, 69 
Starr, Dr. Comfort, 69 
Starr, David, 179, 274 
Starr, Frederick Ratchford, 404 
Starr, Col. John, death of, 455 
Starr, Major John Edward, 196 
Starr, Joseph, 327 
Starr, Eev. Dr. Eeginald H., 404 
Starr, Major Eobert W., 196, 197, 206 

277, 426, 432, 439 and 1st Starr 

Family. 
Starr, Major Samuel, 64, 69, 226, 274 



INDEX 



897 



Starr '3 Point, 22, 28 

Starratt Family, 832-3 

Steadman Family, S33-5 

Steadman, Jud^e James, 532 

Steam Mill Village, 153 

Steamboats between Windsor and St. 

John, 184 
Stephens, Robert, 84 
Sterns, Rev. H., 254 
Sterns and Taylor. Messrs., 449 
Stevens, Moses, 126 
Stewart Family, 835-6 
Stewart, J. J., 406 
Stewart, Robert L., 28 
Stirling, Earl of, 25 
Stock, thoroughbred, 194 
Stores opened, 201 
Storrs, Rev. John, 254, 256, 257; and 

family, 532-4 
Strong iramily, 837-8 
Strutliers Family, 839 
Struthers, Rev. George 229, 300 
Subercase, Mons., 41 
Subscriptions for government, 450 
Suburbnn Newspaper, 406 
Supreme Court, 160; Judges of, 231 
Sutherland Family, 839-840 
Sutherland, Kenneth, 183 
Sweet Family, 840-1 
Swymmer, Miss Bessie, 135 
Sydney County, 2 

Tanneries, 197, 198 

Taxes not paid, 445, 447 

Teacher, advertisement for, 335 

Teachers in Kentville, 131-135 

Temperance Hall at Horton, 239 

Temperance Society at Windsor, 219 

Temple, Thomas, 25 

Terriau, Jean and Pierre, 26, 27 

Terry Family, 841-2 

Terry, George, 137 

Terry, Henry, 30 

Terry, Capt. John, 90, 92, 131, 137 

Theatres in Halifax, 222 

Thomas, William, 29 

Thomson, George, 534 

Thome Family, 842-3 

Thorne, James Hall, 534-5 

Thorpe Family, 843-4 

Tobin Family, 844-5 

Tobin, Hon. Michael, 330 

Torry, Miss Bessie, 135 

Town meetings, 161, 163; forbidden, 445 

452; town ofiieers, 452 
Township clerks, 170 



Townships erected, 65 

Trade with Annapolis and Louirtburcr. 

200 ^' 

Travelling, 102, 178-182, 279 
Tremaise, Alexander, 132 
Tufts, Harold F., 404 
Tupper Family, 845-9 
Tupper, Rev. Dr. Charles, 535-6 
Tupper, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles, 182, 413 
Tupper, Samuel, and Thomas, 126 
Turner Family, 849-850 
Tutty, Rev. William, 240 
Twining Family, 850-2 
Twining, Rev. Dr. John Thomas, 253. 

351 
Twining, Rev. William, 238, 246, 252-5 

269, 283, 325, 326 

Uniacke, Richard John, 410, 450 
Upper Dyke Village, 28 
Utrecht, Treaty of, 42, 48 

Valuers, Bishop, 37 

Van Buskirk Family, 105, 852-3 

Van Buskirk, Henry, 99, 263, 265 

Van Cortlandt Family, 105, 106, 853-4 

Van Cortlandt, Col. Philip, 433 

Vaughan, Clement L., 404 

Vaughan, H. C, 210 

Vetch, Major Samuel, 432 

Victoria House, 127 

Vieux Logis Fort, 58, 426, 427, attacked 

47 
Vincent, Rev. Robert, 241 
Virgin Lodge, 238, 239, 
Vital Statistics, registration of, 441 

Wabanaki Indians, 19 

Wade, Rev. J. M. C, 267 

Wagons introduced, 180 

Walker, Alexander, 265 

Wallace Family, 854-5 

Wallace, Rev. Dr. O. S. C, 404 

Walton Family, 855 

Walton, Simpkins, 34 

Wampanoag Indians, 16 

Ward Family, 855-6 

Ward, Edmund, 406 

Watts, Mr., 335 

Watts' Hymns, 297 

Weatherbe, Lady, 38, 158; poems of, 

379-381; 404 
Weatherbe, Sir Robert, Kt., 158 
Weaver Family, 856 
Weaving, 227 



898 



INDEX 



Webster Families, 857-860, and supple- 
mentary note. 

Webeter, Abraham, 289 

Webster, Deaconees Alice E., 126 

Webster, Barclay, M. P. P., 457 

Webster, Henry Bentley, 136, 536 

Webster, Henry Bentley, M. D., 143 

Webster, Isaac, M. D., 127, 137, 238, 536 

Webster, Lieut. L. Beverley Barclay, 
439, 537-8 

Webster, William Bennett, M, D., 125, 
127, 538-9 

Weeks, Eev, Joshua W., 253 

Weevil appears, 456 

Wellington Dyke, 33 
-Wells Family, 860-2 

Wells, John, M. P. P., 151, 330, 410^ 
452, 539 

Wells, Judah, 151, 162 - 

Welton Family, 862-4 

Welton, Professor D. M., 404 

Wentworth, Sir John, Bart., 177, 264, 
433, 450 

Wesleyan, chapel at Horton, 327; mini- 
sters, 326 

West Family, 864-5 

West, Jabez, 83 

West, Ruth, 226 

West, Capt. Stephen, 410, 442 

Westcott, Eobert, 126 

Wheat, yield of, 193 

Wheatou Family, 865-6 

Whidden Family, 866-7 

Whidden, Charles and William, 131 

Whidden, David, 209, 336, 457 

Whidden, Elizabeth, 133 

Whidden house, 126 

Whidden, John, 196, 298 

White, Eev. Charles De Wolfe, 258 

White, Madam Elizabeth, 213 

Whitefield, Rev. George, 279 

"Whitehall," Parrsborough, 261 

Wickwire Family, 867-870 

Wickwire, Frederick B., 130 

Wickwire, Harry H., M. P. P., 130, 143 

Wickwire, John Leander, M. P., 153, 
413 

Wickwire, Peter, 67, 153 

Wickwire, Ehoda (Schoficld), 57 

Wickwire, Dr. William N., 153 

Wickwire Dyke, 148 



Wier, Arthur M., 198 

Wilkins, Eev. Dr. Isaac, 410 

Willett, 433 

Williams Family, 870-1 

Williams, Roger, 303 

Williams, Rev. Dr. Solomon, 275, 276 

Willis, Rev. Eobert, 351 

Willoughby Family, 871-3 

Willoughby, Bliss, 64, 69 

Willoughby, Samuel, M. D., 69, 84, 237, 

410, 539 
Wilmot Township, 2, 4, 91-93, 99; and 

Aylesford, 262, 263 
Wilmot, Governor Montague, 91 
Windsor, bridge lottery, 454; families, 

138; Eeading Society, 219; township 

formed, 3 
Windsor Academy, 348 
Winnowing machines, 450 
Winslow, Lieut. Col. John, 30, 32, 51 
Winter evening stories, 231, 232 
Winthrop, Joseph, 177 
Wiswall, Eev. John, 195, 245, 246, 248, 

252, 262, 264 
Wiswall, John, Jr., 266 
Witter Family, 874-6 
Wolfville, 28, 147-150, 359 
Wood Family, 875-6 
Wood, James, 197 ', 

Wood, Eev, Samuel, 271 | 

Wood, Rev. Thomas, 240, 241 
Woodruff, Jonathan, 83 
Woodward, the Misses, 147 
Woodworth Families, 876-880 
Woodworth, Benjamin, 151 
Woodworth, Elizabeth S. W., and Silas, 

67 
Woodworth, John E., 406, 779 
Woodworth, Sarah, 87 
Wright, Rev. Joseph, 255 



Yewens, Rev. Harry L., 137, 257, 258, 

and family, 540-1 
Yorkshire settlers, 322 
Yould, William, 143, 457 
Young, Sir William, Kt., 193 
Young, William, 193 
Young, Mrs. William, 29, and the Eand 

Family. 
Young, John, 193 



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